When gongs go wrong ... a short history of awards being given to the losers

The Oscars are usually a model of ruthless efficiency – aside from the bad calls, epic awkwardness and occasional streaker. The sole controversy came in 1993 when presenter Jack Palance read out Marisa Tomei’s name as best supporting actress for My Cousin Vinny. The rumour spread that this was a mistake: either because it was the only name he could remember, or because he was reading off the teleprompter rather than the card in his hand.

The Academy didn’t bat an eyelid: Tomei kept the prize – which evidence shows was hers anyway. But that controversy pales into insignificance compared with the monumental mistake at this year’s awards, when Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty erroneously read out La La Land as the best picture winner – rather than Moonlight.

Dunaway and Beatty can at least console themselves with these examples of when worse has happened in the past.

‘I don’t know what to say right now’: Not Australia’s Next Top Model, 2010

When Sarah Murdoch announced the winner for the 2010’s Australia’s Next Top Model, it was with a saccharine sincerity that was cringeworthy enough: “It’s you, Kelsey.”

But that cringe had nothing on what came next. At the end of a gruelling competition, in a finale broadcast live, there had been a cock-up with the earpiece and it wasn’t Kelsey at all.

“Oh my god. I don’t know what to say right now. I’m feeling a bit sick about this,” Murdoch said, cutting the applause and the music short. “It’s Amanda. I’m so sorry. It was fed to me wrong.”

Artist of the millennium: Michael Jackson accepts imaginary award at MTV VMAs, 2002

In 2002, the MTV Video Music Awards coincided with the 44th birthday of Michael Jackson, which the producers chose to celebrate in exactly the same way as I will choose to celebrate mine: having early noughties-era Britney Spears present him with a very large cake.

“I consider him the artist of the millennium,” Spears said in her speech. What Jackson heard: “We are awarding him the trophy for artist of the millennium.”

“When I was a little boy in Indiana, if someone had told me that one day I would be getting, as a musician, the artist of the millennium award, I wouldn’t have believed it,” he said. As a child, it turns out, Michael Jackson had a nose for fake news.

‘Tabulation error’: Miss Florida misses out, 2014

Twenty-year-old Elizabeth Fechtel had only six days to bask in the crown-and-sash glory of her Miss Florida win before they were snatched from her in 2014. Mary Sullivan, executive director of the pageant, travelled to Fechtel’s home in Leesburg to deliver the bad news: there had been a “tabulation error” in the judging and Victoria Cohen had won instead.

“This is the worst nightmare in every pageant director’s life ... and it’s a lose-lose situation,” Hayes said at the time.

It wasn’t the first gaffe in that year’s quest to find Miss America, either. After being crowned Miss Delaware, as she prepared to move to the next round, Amanda Longacre was told she was ineligible for the national competition: at the ripe old age of almost-25, she was deemed too withered to enter.

‘Phelps might not even make the podium’: Canadian Olympics gets it wrong, 2016

If you were watching the men’s 200m medley at the 2016 Olympics, you were watching Michael Phelps win his 22nd Olympic gold.

Unless you were watching on CBC in Canada, where there was something else going on entirely.

“Phelps doesn’t look like he has this one in him,” commentator Bryan MacDonald called, as Phelps surged ahead as unambiguously as one can. “Ryan Lochte is going to beat Michael Phelps ... and Phelps might not even make the podium!”

‘I have to apologise’: Steve Harvey mistakes Miss Universe, 2015

You’d think after that the world of pageants had learned but no: in 2015, in the final moments of the Miss Universe pageant, comedian Steve Harvey pulled a Warren Beatty and announced Miss Colombia (Ariadna Gutierrez) as the winner, instead of Miss Philippines (Pia Alonzo Wurtzbach).

Judging by the unforgivably complex layout of the card he was reading from, it was an easy mistake to make. But having Paulina Vega literally lift the crown from one woman’s head to give it to another, right there on the telly? Seems a bit rough.