Tony Earnshaw: Dining out on my brief appearance in an Oscar-winning movie

The Social Network didn’t snatch best picture and best director for David Fincher, which instead went to The King’s Speech and Tom Hooper. And, of course, Colin Firth was crowned King of Hollywood, albeit briefly, as everyone said he would be.

I was a miniscule part of The King’s Speech, and I’ve spent the last 15 months telling everyone all about my experiences in minute detail. Among family and friends, I have exhausted it as a subject for after-dinner chatter.

For the record I can be glimpsed, just over Colin Firth’s right shoulder, as a policeman at the beginning of the film. And that’s all, folks. Two days spent shivering on the freezing terraces at Elland Road amounts to a measly five seconds on screen. I don’t even merit a close-up.

Still, I’ve achieved an ambition. The quartet of Oscars makes The King’s Speech worth shouting about. I was also a Russian gangster (with a questionable accent) in Cricket, a low-budget independent feature made in Manchester, and a fanged zombie (go figure) in the 12-minute short Cinema of Horror, made in Leeds. Throw in my eight-second spot in the Swiss documentary Von Werra, about the Luftwaffe pilot who escaped from a PoW camp in World War II, and my accumulated screen time amounts to less than 90 seconds.

So that’s an Oscar-winner, an indie, a short and a documentary. I also played a hospital visitor in a TV series but was mysteriously edited out of the finished product. Some you win, some you lose.

I consider my film appearances to be fun. In any case, they make me laugh. And my wife. Doubtless the kids will enjoy them too, at least once, before they’re urging dear old Dad to put the DVD back on the shelf and not to embarrass them in front of their squirming pals.

The biggest surprise was in spotting myself in the skit starring Anne Hathaway and James Franco during the Academy Awards telecast. That means I’ve been seen by a billion people. Count ‘em! Of course only about 30 or so actually knew it was me, but it’s the thought that counts – and it’s another element to add to my tedious post-meal anecdotage.

But now it has to end. The film has triumphed at the Oscars. Colin Firth is man of the moment. The world can look forward to another year of winners and losers in 2012. Me, I can freeze frame The King’s Speech for the rest of my life and grow old telling people who don’t really care that I was in it.

And as Tom Hanks says in Forrest Gump: “That’s all I have to say about that.”