Last night The Dark Knight swept the People’s Choice Awards – the most white-bread, gonkishly populist, helmet-wearing awards show in the world. In other words, The Dark Knight is the film that fans of Kid Rock, Kate Hudson and Two And A Half Men like best.

In essence, this makes The Dark Knight the new Pirates Of The Caribbean – good news for anyone who wanted Batman 3 to feature three hours of Christian Bale running around pulling self-consciously barmy faces all the time.

Do you hear that sound? That’s the sound of The Dark Knight’s Oscar hopes packing their suitcases and leaving town. It’s impossible for The Dark Knight to win any Oscars now. It has to be. Because the law quite clearly states you can either win People’s Choice Awards or Oscars, and The Dark Knight has just won five People’s Choice Awards.

Why can’t you win both? Simple – the Oscars are voted for by people who want to prove how deep they are, which is why they’re always won by serious films about Catholic paedophilia and the Holocaust that people never watch. Meanwhile the People’s Choice Awards are voted for by people, who we all know are universally stupid.

That’s why, at last night’s People’s Choice Awards, Ellen DeGeneres was voted better than David Letterman, Adam Sandler was voted better than Steve Carell and Two And A Half Men won a category that 30 Rock wasn’t even nominated for.

The biggest winner of the night, though, was The Dark Knight – the film that started off as a moody, complex, morally ambiguous thriller and ended up as the film that every moron on Earth quotes to one another at the office because they went to see it 17 times in a row. AP reports:

“The Dark Knight” soared away with every trophy it was nominated for Wednesday at the 35th annual fan-favorite CBS ceremony. The caped crusader flick won five awards, including favorite cast, superhero, action movie and on-screen matchup for Christian Bale’s Batman and the late Heath Ledger’s Joker. “On behalf of all of the cast from the movie, thank you very much to the fans,” said Bale. “Here’s to Heath.”

Of course, just because The Dark Knight won a lot of People’s Choice Awards, that doesn’t make it a bad film – just a film that gained an unexpectedly populist audience. It’s a bit of a worry, actually – how is Christopher Nolan expected to keep his crown as a bravely visionary director when his movies get embraced by the dribbling public so easily? At this rate the only way he’ll be able to hang on to his credibility is to make Batman 3 a 15-hour-long slowed-down single shot of a disturbed old lady cutting away at her clothes with a pair of kitchen scissors.

Or maybe – just maybe – we’re reading too much into this. After all, everybody knows that the People’s Choice Awards lost all their credibility when they dropped the Nice ‘N Easy Fans Favourite Hair prize.

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And the People's Choice Awards? Well, the People's Choice Awards are the annoying shit-thick brat of a crosseyed kid who needs to be constantly dosed up to the wazoo on Ritalin to stop him from crapping on the rug, cutting his own hair with the electric carver or flushing the dog down the toilet.

How do we know this? Because at the People's Choice Awards last night Pirates Of The Caribbean 3 won Best Film. Even though it was obviously awful.

This has been a particularly austere awards season, for all sorts of reasons. Firstly, the ongoing writers' strike has forced the cancellation of some of the bigger shows since no actor wants to be seen crossing a picket line. Not that they'd have been fun shows anyway, because the big winners so far have either been a film about an angry oilman, a film about a funny-coiffed man killing people or a dickhead dying in the snow.

But forget about what these so-called experts think about films, because they know nothing – the People's Choice Awards are where it's at. 'It' obviously being a high-profile demonstration that collectively the public is about as clever and well-informed as that kid you went to school with who ate nothing but tissue paper at lunchtime.

The People's Choice Awards took place last night in slightly different circumstances than usual. Where the awards usually consist of a whizz-bang star-studded affair where all sorts of famous people turn up and watch Johnny Depp win loads of stuff for Pirates Of The Caribbean, this year the writer's strike meant that the People's Choice Awards just consisted of Queen Latifah presenting a hastily-compiled clip-show featuring filmed acceptance speeches from the winners, with nobody around to see Johnny Depp win loads of stuff for Pirates Of The Caribbean.

This year the big winner at the People's Choice Award was Pirates Of The Caribbean 3, despite the fact that it was 15 hours long and made no sense whatsoever. Pirates Of The Caribbean 3 won Favourite Movie, Best Male Movie Star, Favourite Threequel and Best Female Action Star, with that last award probably going to Orlando Bloom or something.

But although it had the strongest showing, Pirates Of The Caribbean didn't win all the People's Choice Awards. Reese Witherspoon and Joaquin Phoenix won Best Female Movie Star and Best Leading Man respectively. Although you might assume that they won these awards for Walk The Line, that couldn't possibly be true because the movie was released three years ago. So instead we can only assume that Reese Witherspoon won her award for her performance in watched-by-nobody political thriller Rendition, while Joaquin Phoenix won his award for his slurred, near-incomprehensible performance in the painfully dull We Own The Night.

Other People's Choice Awards winners included Harry Potter And The Order Of The Phoenix (the worst-ever Harry Potter film), Shrek The Third (the worst-ever Shrek film), Drew Barrymore (star of two of 2007's worst films) and Ocean's Thirteen (the worst thing we have ever paid to experience in our entire lives).

Of course, even though the People's Choice Awards are called the People's Choice Awards, it doesn't necessarily mean that all the people get to choose the winners. We didn't, for example, and in the past we've been referred to as people at least three times. Chances are you didn't vote either. So let's all push for a retitling next year that better reflects the voters – we want to see 2009 become the Awards Chosen By The People Who Get Easily Distracted By Shiny Objects, Can't Tell If A Patio Door Is Open Or Closed Before They Try To Walk Through It And Probably Have Nonironic Mullets.

Read more:

People Still Love Pirates - E! Online