THEATRE director and choreographer Matthew Bourne took to Twitter this week to vent his spleen at the Oscars red carpet coverage, tweeting: ‘I wanna see stars arriving in limos with flashing cameras and crowd going wild. #OldSchoolGlamour’.

I’m with him on that. Watching highlights of the Academy Awards, I was struck by how sanitised it all seemed. Actresses with skeletal frames and severe chignons blinked like gazelles, and the men oozed designer grooming and false modesty. Any cheering crowd was presumably penned off, well away from the Beautiful People.

But beneath the glossy surface, controversy raged. Powerful speeches touched on gender inequality, civil rights and embracing sexuality, and there were bitter accusations of a lack of diversity on the Academy voting panel – largely white men – following the absence of Selma, a chronicle of Martin Luther King’s campaign for equal voting rights, in several categories.

For me, one of the most striking inequalities at this year’s Oscars was the public school privilege that churned out our homegrown nominees. “It’s the Eton Vs Harrow Oscars race” screamed one headline as Eddie Redmayne and Benedict Cumberbatch battled it out for the Best Actor gong. When Redmayne won, he acknowledged in his speech that “I’m a lucky, lucky man”. Too right.

Of course it was more than luck that landed both actors at the Oscars. Each delivered incredibly moving performances, portraying extraordinary men. But there’s no doubt that Old Etonian Redmayne, a former classmate of Prince William, and Old Harrovian Cumberbatch, son of an aristo-thespian couple, have had a massive leg-up in life.

They’re the latest toff actors to take Hollywood by storm, others include Damian Lewis and Dominic West, and while proud of their success, we shouldn’t ignore uncomfortable implications.

Actor David Morrissey recently raised concerns about acting becoming exclusive to the wealthy, with a growing “economic exclusion” of the working-class. Having gone to drama school from Liverpool on a student grant, he points out he’d find it much harder to access the industry today.

Julie Walters fears that, with many big names coming from posh schools, there won’t be any actors left from ordinary backgrounds who can pull off a regional accent.

Drama school is now a pipedream for many. Today’s acting cream are far removed from the Angry Young Men of the Kitchen Sink stage and cinema movement. The bottle of brown sauce in post-war drama has been replaced by a silver spoon.