The children were required to dump all of their Halloween candy on the table so that their parents could apportion it among them.

They even decided to give him something they never gave Burton: an honorary Oscar. When O'Toole got wind of it, though, he popped his cork like a bottle of bubbly, and, at age 70, reminded the academy that he was still in the game and might win the lovely bugger outright.

Much more helpful than the press trip was the performance of an icy-miened 14-year-old Romanian gymnast, Nadia Comaneci.

I’m one of those people who avoids confrontations like the plague.