Viewers are warned this report contains flash photography

The Cannes Film Festival came to us last night. When the BH came home from work, she announced there was a roadblock right in front of our house. So we went out onto the balcony to have a look. We found that it was not one roadblock but three: effectively, our wee rue des Cordiers had been completely cordoned off. By now there were the usual mock-Rambo municipal police, manning the barricades, plus plain clothes chappies wearing such 'civilian' suits that they were immediately recognisable for what they were. More security, this time expensive, private and intimidating, filled the rue des Cordiers, orchestrated by an overweight man with long greasy hair in ringlets. Radios crackled.

Why all the commotion? Well, Mamo, the chef from the restaurant next door, was in his chef's stiff-starched finest, and his trophy wife was wearing a fetching, body-hugging number which was black in front and white when seen from behind. When she pivoted round on her high heels, you had the disturbing sensation that she had been replaced by a very accurate, but differently dressed screen-double. Clearly celebs were about to turn up for a homely pizza, as they do.

Photographers lounged in the street below. One of them was making apparently friendly signs to the BH, which she took to be bonhomie. However, when she went back in for a moment, the same chap waved two twenty euro notes at me, described as "de quoi s'acheter des chaussures neuves", and signalled his desire to be on our balcony. What was more insulting? The presumption that we could be bought, the actual price they thought we were worth, or the perception of what kind of shoes we were in need of?

Then the stretch limos started arriving, to disgorge their swanky passengers at Mamo's. Most of the ostentatiously black vehicles were the size of Humvees, quite a desirable status symbol, you might think, for aspiring starlets, until you look down into the narrow depths of the rue des Cordiers and you realise that in such an exiguous street there is almost no room between the walls to open the car doors. Expensive clothing and outrageously sub-ergonomic footware were witness to entertaining anatomical contortions as the celebs squeezed and wriggled out of the cars, degrooming themselves in the process. Toyboys hovered to commiserate and straighten, with a lingering pat to pert backsides, ruffled clothing and even more ruffled amour propre.

After about an hour and a half of 'people' delivery, the flash photography started up. "Angelina", cooed the crowds. They had been waiting for Julia Roberts, but got the star of Lara Croft: Tomb Raider instead.