SARAH OLIVER: Wondering how to beat Oscars racism? Ask a bunch of old women 

Jada Pinkett Smith, wife of Will Smith, has announced the couple (pictured at the Oscars in 2014) will boycott next month's ceremony because not a single black actor has been shortlisted for an award

Being a teenage cub reporter on Tyneside wasn't easy. Blokes in uniform from the emergency services talked only to other blokes. Men who should have known better, barristers and the like, worked on the assumption you knew nothing of the law.

Off the top of my head I can remember a senior detective driving me to a remote country pub for a 'briefing' and trying to get me into bed (I had to call my dad from the payphone in the bar, and ask him to come and fetch me), and the subject of a story who told me: 'I'm going to open your pretty face.'

Later in my career, there was the day my first Fleet Street boss arrived in Manchester from London and asked me to put the kettle on because he'd never seen me in the flesh and assumed anyone with big hair and a small skirt was the tea girl.

I'm (mostly) good at what I do, and being a miner's daughter, grit and optimism run through me like a coal seam. I never complained or cried; I just figured they were a bunch of misogynist losers and one day, when I'd got to wherever it was I was going, I'd embarrass the lot of them in a column. You know who you are, you hairy-toed old knuckle-draggers.

It wasn't completely fair, no. I could have had a sweeter start but then I didn't have to chain myself to railings or throw myself under the King's horse to make progress in my life as a working woman either.

Sexism is grim but there are sensible, practical ways of dealing with it, and then there's the nuclear-strike option which claims victims on both sides. The same goes for other kinds of discrimination, which brings me to the massive racism row over this year's Oscars.

Jada Pinkett Smith, wife of actor Will Smith, has announced the power couple will boycott next month's big night because, for the second year running, not a single black actor has been shortlisted for an award.

Charlotte Rampling has described this as 'anti-white racism' and suggested: 'Maybe the black actors don't deserve to be on the final stretch.'

Sir Michael Caine has similarly said: 'You can't vote for an actor because he's black. You've got to give a good performance.'

Boom. Social media meltdown. Tinseltown in uproar. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences urgently committed to 'doubling the number of women and diverse members' by 2020. Five weeks out from Oscar night on February 28 and Alfred Hitchcock himself could not have created more sinister atmospherics. And still the threat of a black boycott, a nightmare in the city of dreams.

This year Dame Maggie Smith, 81, was nominated for a Golden Globe for The Lady In The Van

What's true and telling is the nominees are picked by an Academy which is 93 per cent white, according to the LA Times. It's also 77 per cent male, and 85 per cent are aged 50 and over, so not very diverse. It's easy to see why black Hollywood feels it's been snubbed. But what to do about it?

One suggested remedy is mandatory diversity – Oscar quotas in other words – the kind of politically correct plan which creates discrimination of a different sort even while it's trying to level the playing field. We know all about that from modern feminism, from women-only shortlists in politics, and certainty that the occasional plum job in public life will be given to a woman because the time is right.

But what's the point of a glittering prize if it's not 24-carat, merely gold plate? If I'd been a shoo-in for a job because my chromosomes are XX and not XY, I'd always know I was a fake and so would you. Worse still, a genuinely worthy man would have been deprived.

So as far as the Oscar row is concerned I'm with young black actor O'Shea Jackson Jr, who plays his father, the rapper Ice Cube, in Straight Outta Compton. 'All we can do,' he said, 'is sharpen up our tools and give them something that they definitely can't deny.' In other words acknowledge that racism exists and it won't be eradicated by quotas; don't demand an ugly, politicised boycott but be so dazzlingly brilliant you can't fail. Wise and inspiring words.

Actually if you look to Hollywood you'll see another discriminated against minority group who've already done as he suggests: older women.

After decades of controversy about their treatment in the film industry, this year Dame Maggie Smith, 81, was nominated for a Golden Globe for The Lady In The Van, while Charlotte Rampling, 69, is up for an Oscar for her film, 45 Years.

Dame Helen Mirren, 70, was nominated for a Golden Globe and a Critics Choice Award, and could win a Screen Actors Guild Award for the movie Trumbo, while Jane Fonda, 78, was nominated for a Golden Globe and won a Hollywood Film Award for Youth.

Lily Tomlin, 76, and enjoying her first lead role for 27 years in Grandma, was nominated for a Golden Globe.

Clever girls. They've overcome the very real discrimination they faced – ageism – with their work. Jada Pinkett Smith, a mere 44 and utterly rubbish in her last film, Magic Mike XXL, could take a masterclass from them. And I don't just mean in acting.

This time next year we'll be watching the inauguration of the next US President. Michelle Obama, out of a job as FLOTUS, has revealed that one of the things she is most looking forward to is being allowed to open a window without getting security clearance. If the Trumpa-Loompas manage to get The Donald into the White House, that's not a problem his wife Melania is ever going to have. I can't imagine he's let a rogue breeze rustle through his combover for quite some time. 

God, Mariah... I wish I had a ring as vulgar as yours

The diamond engagement ring given to Mariah Carey, left, by billionaire businessman James Packer is worth up to £8 million and is 35 carats, two carats bigger than the Krupp diamond Richard Burton gave Liz Taylor. That's super-size vulgar – and big enough to concuss a hippo at close quarters. I so wish it were mine.

The diamond engagement ring given to Mariah Carey, pictured, by billionaire businessman James Packer is worth up to £8 million

How come in our increasingly paperless society there's more and more paperwork to do? What used to be just admin when I was single turned into wedmin (wedding admin), then with the arrival of children fadmin (family admin). It's driving me bonkers – madmin, surely? – and above all making me miss doing things I really want to do. Sadmin.

The Archers has gone for one of its tricky social realism storylines again. Stuff the milk quotas or whether the Village Hall will be open in time for Easter – it's all about the dastardly Rob Titchener and the domestic abuse he's perpetrating against his wife Helen, nee Archer. Check out his avatar on the Twitter page of Ambridge Synthetics, which recreates scenes from the drama using Playmobil-style plastic toys. Rob is, quite rightly, a vampire. 

RACHEL JOHNSON IS AWAY