Neil Patrick Harris' Oscars nightmare

Actor Neil Patrick Harris, who is set to host the Oscar ceremony, wants everyone to "stop talking" until after the award ceremony as he keeps hearing his planned jokes on other live TV shows.

The 41-year-old actor, who has been working with writers on material for the 87th Academy Awards ceremony on Sunday, is upset that his "funny and strong" material keeps cropping up elsewhere, reports femalefirst.co.uk.

Speaking at "The Ellen DeGeneres Show", he said: "It's a tricky process with the content.

"I'm finding good jokes that we had that are funny and strong, then I'll watch a late-night talk show and they'll say the same joke ... the 'Grammys', 'Saturday Night Live' ... I just want everyone to stop talking until Monday!"

Patrick Harris said he has been "having nightmares" on how to top last year's host Ellen DeGeneres' famous selfie with a number of Hollywood stars.

"(It's created) this horrible dark cloud over my head. How do you beat the selfie that broke the Internet?" he said.

However, DeGeneres reassured him her photograph was a "perfect fluke" as she had no idea how the star-studded audience would react to the idea.

She said: "You can't plan that. I hoped that it would happen. I hoped people would jump in.

"So all you have to do is have a nugget of a good idea, and if everybody's on board and they're playing, whatever your idea is, they're with you. That just was such a perfect fluke that happened and I was so lucky."