Globally-televised awards ceremonies like The Oscars require everyone involved to constantly be on their best behaviour throughout – unless you're Eddie Murphy, in which case you can wig out and go home the instant you don't win an award.

According to several reports, Eddie Murphy – who was hot favourite to win the Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his role as a James Brown-alike in Dreamgirls – stormed out the Kodak Theatre and immediately went home without attending any post-Oscar parties as soon as Alan Arkin won the Oscar instead of him. But don't blow Eddie Murphy's girly Oscar night strop out of proportion, Eddie's slaves are saying – because Eddie Murphy would have lost his shit and bitterly flounced out of the Academy Awards even if he'd won the Oscar. Apparently.

Not such a long time ago, Dreamgirls was the film to beat when it came to the Oscars. We were told that Beyonce was going to win an Oscar, Jennifer Hudson was going to win an Oscar, Eddie Murphy was going to win an Oscar, that song everyone's sick of was going to win an Oscar and the whole thing was going to win so many Oscars that everyone else needn't bother turning up. But that didn't really happen – all through awards season Dreamgirls was continually cut out in favour of movies starring Helen Mirren and Forest Whitaker.

This was reflected in the conspicuously Dreamgirls-light Oscar nominations, but Dreamgirls did have two tricks up its sleeve. One was Jennifer Hudson, an American Idol runner-up whose portrayal of a fat singer won her several Best Supporting Actress awards, and the other was Eddie Murphy. Everything seemed perfectly aligned for Eddie Murphy to win a Best Supporting Actor Oscar – he'd already won a Golden Globe for it, James Brown died a few months ago meaning that he'd probably pick up a lot of tribute votes – but instead the Oscar went to Alan Arkin from Little Miss Sunshine.

All the other Oscar favourites like Helen Mirren, Forest Whitaker and Martin Scorsese won awards on Sunday night, but not Eddie Murphy – who may have lost out thanks to the incredibly badly-timed release of his 'Eddie Murphy in a fatsuit as a lady' comedy Norbit. On hearing that he'd lost the Oscar, Eddie Murphy did the only thing he could and reportedly threw a tantrum and stormed out of the Oscars halfway through, shunning all post-Oscar parties and going home in a terrifying – not to mention embarrassing – rage. Oddly enough some people are saying that this means Eddie Murphy is a bit of a sore loser, but that's not the case says Eddie Murphy slave Arnold Robinson:

"Eddie had always planned on leaving after his category was announced to spend the rest of the evening with his family. He did the same thing following the Golden Globe Awards."

Of course! Why didn't we think of that? It's obvious – who doesn't love spoiling the atmosphere of the world's most-watched awards ceremony by getting their knickers in a twist and running away when they win? In fact, we're going to take a leaf out of Eddie Murphy's award ceremony handbook here – at the forthcoming Ask/Metro Brit Blog awards (ahemvoteahem), we promise to swear loudly and march out in a godawful tizzy regardless of if we win or not. And then we'll knock Scary Spice up and quickly leave her too, because from now on the Eddie Murphy way is the hecklerspray way.

Read more:

Murphy's Oscar Outburst Overblown? – E! Online