Chris Ayres, Los Angeles correspondent of the Times of London, liveblogged the Oscars and found Her Majesty Gwyneth Paltrow's vocal stylings a tad odd. For a Crossroads girl, anyway:

"My wife, Lucie, has just nominated Gwyneth Paltrow for Best Dressed of the evening. Unfortunately my fashion adjectives aren't quite up to scratch, but the words 'salmon', '1940s' and 'pleated chiffon' have been mentioned. But what's up with Gwyneth's accent? She's started to speak Ameriglish, like Madonna."

Later at the Vanity Fair party, they came face-to-face and Ayres and his glass of wine almost made an indelible impression on her dress.

I was making my way through a room decorated floor-to-ceiling with myrtle hedging, while clutching a glass of red wine. In the background, a remix of Summertime played, heavy on the bongos. Guests swayed, ashtrays rattled. The room was crowded, so I did what anyone with experience of commuting on the Northern Line would do — I used my elbows.

"Doing the exact same thing but in the opposite direction was a slim, blonde woman in a salmon-coloured dress. Before I knew it, my wine glass had connected with her stomach and the liquid inside was sloshing violently. “Oops,” I said, looking up and wincing. Gwyneth Paltrow was looking back at me. “Urgh!” she exclaimed. I had just avoided the horror of ruining the most photographed dress of the 2007 Academy Awards — not to mention the possibility of making Gwyneth sob more loudly than she did on winning Best Actress in 1999.

Ayres still writes the periodic L.A. Notebook for the U.K. Times and commandeered the paper's news blog for the Oscars, but his own So L.A. blog has fallen from the list since he returned from book leave in December.

Photo: AP Photo/Chris Carlson via Yahoo