Neil Patrick Harris, the American actor, writer, producer and singer, has some experience hosting award ceremonies: he has done the honours four times at the Tony Awards and at the Primetime Emmy Awards twice. But none of that mattered when he came out to present the Academy Awards. The star, who had earned the “funny” tag for his portrayal of a serial womaniser in the TV series How I Met Your Mother, did not exactly meet Twitter’s exacting standards for humour. In his failings he joined good company: the Oscar hosting curse has followed such luminaries as James Franco, Anne Hathaway and Seth McFarlane in the past.

It didn’t start off that bad for Harris, as Twitter users seemed to warm up to the opening monologue:

 

But less than an hour into the show and people were already suggesting that they wanted last year's host, Ellen DeGeneres, back.



 



And they weren't subtle about it:

Four hours is a long time to sustain interest, but the show had got the thumbs-down pretty early on:

He did make some jokes about the audience, but the joke was on him:

So much so that even Seth McFarlane got invoked:



But McFarlane, on his part, was graciousness personified:



There were desperate measures:

Yes, the best part of the ceremony was then Harris, imitating Michael Keaton in Birdman, stripped down to his underwear.

But there were some redeeming moments too, at least for some:


But, clearly, not for everyone, or not for too long:

And to be fair, those wanting to be charitable remembered to give the writers some flak too:

And some tried to be polite:

But not everyone:

Everyone could relate:

And the jokes continued. On him, that is:

From proposed TV shows:

To those who could have replaced him:

And some...

Neil Patrick Harris finally opened the sealed box that everyone was waiting for and read out his predictions. As was the case with the whole show, this gag too fell flat.