PWC auditor responsible for Oscars best film blunder
A high flying accountant charged with ensuring the Oscars voting ran smoothly has been named as the man responsible for the excruciating blunder in which the wrong film was awarded Best Picture.
Hollywood stars in the audience were left gaping after producers of the film La La Land were told they had not in fact won - and were forced to hand over the prized award to the rival team for Moonlight.
Emma Stone, who was named best leading actress for her turn in La La Land, reportedly described it as "one of the most horrible moments of my life".
It has since emerged that the extraordinary error was caused by Brian Cullinan, one of two senior US staff at accountants PriceWaterhouse Coopers charged with overseeing the Oscars voting process.
He handed the wrong envelope to presenter Warren Beatty, PwC's US chairman Tim Ryan told Variety magazine.
"There's a stack for the back-ups and the ones that are not the back-ups and he took from the wrong stack," he said.
Mr Ryan told the magazine Mr Cullinan was left feeling "very, very terrible and horrible" and repeated the firm's apologies for the historic mix-up.
It was reportedly the fourth year Mr Cullinan had been responsible for handing out the envelopes, the contents of which are known only by the two PwC employees handing them out on the night.
He and colleague Martha Ruiz were in charged of making sure the votes were counted accurately and with ensuring the the results remained secret to the very last moment.
They stood in the wings passing the envelopes with the details of the winners to the presenters just before they walked on stage to ensure there were no leaks of the winners.
The global accountancy company, which has held the coveted role of overseeing the ballot for 80 years, swiftly apologised and launched a post-mortem of the incident on Sunday night.
It is not known of they might lose out on the job of overseeing the process in future as a result of the gaffe.