I got a pasting from Gorgeous George

Most encounters on the red carpet just slip by without any fuss. Then there’s George Clooney having a pop at me in front of the world’s media. Nice!

I was covering the Britannia Awards, held by Bafta LA. George was there to receive the Stanley Kubrick Award for excellence in film.

We’ve always got on really well, having a lot of laughs. He’d been getting a lot of serious questions so I thought I’d lighten things up a bit.

I jokingly asked him when he thought he’d been excellent in films and then asked another about Gravity.

He has a small part it’s Sandra Bullock’s gig all the way but I suggested he was helping her out.

He joshed about throwing her a bone as her career was struggling. And he said the way to get Julia Roberts on side he’s producing her new movie was just to send alcohol as she’s a drinker.

You always get lines like that from George but the publicists keep trying to move the stars along, tapping you to tell you it’s your last question.

I wanted to ask just generally what he thought of British women.

But after all that’s gone on in recent weeks with George possibly dating a British lawyer, he decided he’d slaughter me in front of the cameras.

“So Ross, you’ve just segued from that into British women. You give me two nice questions and now you go for the cheap shot.”

I tried to tell him I’d been tapped to move on but he was in full flow.

“Ross, I’ve seen you do many segues over the years but that’s by far and away the worst one ever.”

My protestations that I wasn’t prying into his love life were having no effect. He physically spun me round to the camera and told me to go back to my bit and carry on.

And then he said we got there in the end “What’s not to love about British women.”

All the TV crews had been focusing on George slaughtering me. But if you have to be slaughtered by anyone, George is the best.

These awards get bigger and better every year.

I remember Hugh Grant saying when he got an award that he read the invite as Baftala and wondered if it was one of Madonna’s new religions he should be joining.

It’s held at the Beverley Hilton, the same place as the Golden Globes. It’s a tough room as it has different levels. I’ve done gigs there and I was mentioning how hard it could be to Rob Brydon, who was hosting it.

Sometimes you do a gag and it’s “British humour, American silence”. But I said to Rob that he’d be fine as there were a lot of Brits in the audience.

He admitted it was nerve-racking to look out at the likes of George and Julia but promised he had a great opening line.

He started off by saying: “I know what you’re all thinking. Hugh Grant has really let himself go.”

That got a big laugh and he was off to a good start.

Another star I spoke to beforehand was Sasha Baron Cohen. I quizzed him on whether he was planning any of his notorious stunts. In all seriousness he said, no, those days were behind him. Yeah right!

He was getting the Charlie Chaplin award for excellence in comedy and Salma Hayek came on to talk about Sasha.

Then they brought on a woman, introduced as the oldest surviving cast member from a Chaplin movie. Apparently she’d been a child when she worked with him and there was a picture of her with Chaplin.

She presented Sasha with a cane, saying it had been Charlie’s.

He did a funny little Charlie Chaplin walk around her with it but, as he leaned over on it, it broke and he allegedly inadvertently fell and pushed her off the stage.

There were gasps everywhere. He immediately jumped down and started apparently giving her CPR before she was carried out.

It got a massive laugh as soon as people realised it was all a joke.

But, trust me, there was a mixed reaction folk really weren’t sure!