It wasn’t until Stephen Woolley handed me the microphone that I realised I was expected to say something. Stephen is the producer of How to Lose Friends & Alienate People, the forthcoming film of my autobiographical book, and we were holding a small press event in Cannes for British and Australian journalists. The plan was to show them a couple of clips from the film and then answer questions. He had just finished singing the praises of Bob Weide, the director of the film, and introduced Simon Pegg, the actor who plays me. I assumed the next step would be to start the projector. But I was wrong.

“Before we begin, I think Toby wants to say a few words,” he said.

I stood there clutching the microphone trying to think of something witty. The assembled hacks looked distinctly non-plussed: they hadn’t come all this way to stare at another journalist.

“Er, this feels really odd,” I said. “I don’t really belong up here. I belong down there with you lot.”

With that, I handed the microphone to Simon, pulled a notepad out of my pocket and leapt into the bear pit.

My aim was to reassure these former colleagues that having a film made of my book hadn’t gone to my head, but Simon wasn’t about to let me get away with it.

“He thinks he’s better than you now,” he said. “To be honest, he probably always thought that.”

The hacks laughed knowingly, as if to say, “Tell us something we don’t know.”

Luckily, their mood lifted when the first clip started un-spooling. This isn’t because they thought it was funny, but because the projector broke down.

“What d’you think of the show so far?” shouted one.

“Rubbish,” said another.

Later, during the Q & A, Stephen and Simon tried to win over the unimpressed hacks by continuing to poke fun at me.

“When I first met Toby, I was quite disappointed,” said Simon. “I was expecting him to be more of a larger than life figure -- more of a c***.”

“Yes, I never thought very much of his journalism,” said Stephen.

“Neither do we,” came the cry from the bear pit. Cue general hilarity.

I was expecting the experience of being at Cannes to be more of an ego boost. After all, it is every journalist’s dream to have a film made from something they’ve written and to be played by the number one box office star in the UK. In the event, it turned out to be rather deflating.

__________

I had a better time the following night, when Stephen, Simon and I -- along with half a dozen others -- tried to gatecrash a party at the Hotel Du Cap being thrown by the record producer Nellee Hooper. This was no easy task, given the level of security. We had been told that the guest list included Mick Jagger, Elton John and Madonna.

The Hotel Du Cap is about 20 miles from Cannes and in order to get there we had to hire a mini-bus. When we arrived at the security checkpoint, a quick-thinking girl in the front started rattling off the names of famous people in the hope that one of them would be on the list. No dice. At this point, Stephen Woolley stepped out of the bus, placed his arm round the chief clipboard Nazi, and started whispering in his ear. Seconds later, the velvet rope was lifted and we were ushered through.

“What did you say?” I asked.

“I told him we had Toby Young in the back of the bus,” he joked.

The only pop star at the party, as far as I could tell, was Lilly Allen, who was wearing what she described as her “Miami Vice outfit” -- lime green culottes. I had met her the night before at the party for How to Lose Friends & Alienate People and felt slightly guilty about the fact that, at the end of the evening, she’d been photographed unconscious at one of the tables.

“Sorry about those pictures in all the tabloids,” I said.

“What pictures?”

“You know, the ones of you passed out at the party.”

“They never! It’s so stupid, isn’t it? I mean, I’m twenty-three, for f***’s sake. That’s what people my age do. ’Old the front page: twenty-three year old gets drunk at party!”

__________

Back in London a few days later, I headed over to Shepperton to film a special episode of The Weakest Link. What made it “special” was that all the contestants were journalists.

The first round was a shambles in which virtually no one answered any of Anne Robinson’s questions correctly.

“What star is at the centre of our solar system?” she asked Kevin O’Sullivan, the TV critic of the Daily Mirror.

“Er, pass,” he said.

By the time the fifth round approached, and there were only a handful of contestants remaining, I could smell victory. I was confident I could handle anything Robinson threw at me.

“Toby,” she said. “Pina Colada’s are made with light rum, coconut cream and the juice of which fruit?”

“Er, bananas?”

Seconds later, I was doing the walk of shame back to the green room.

Last week I attended the Cannes film festival and since returning I have been trying to work out what the point of it is.

On the face of it, this isn’t a difficult question. It is an opportunity for filmmakers to sell the distribution rights to their projects in various foreign territories. To take just one example, that is why the producers of There Are Dark Forces, the documentary about the Diana inquest, decided to show a 20-minute extract from their unfinished film to a succession of journalists. They hoped that the previously unseen footage of Prince Philip in a Nazi uniform would provoke such an international outcry that the film would be snapped up by an American distributor.

But what of films like Blindness, the Fernando Meirelles-directed thriller that opened the official competition? That already has a full compliment of distributors so what was the point of bringing it to Cannes? Again, the answer is obvious. The filmmakers expect to pick up one of several prizes available at the festival in the hope of winning over the critics. When it comes to an independent film like Blindness, a good critical reaction is crucial to its box office success.

The mystery is why the makers of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull decided to hold their world premier at Cannes. It was, by some margin, the most high-profile event of the festival, with a lavish party and a host of stars in attendance. What was the point of this three-ring circus? The latest addition to the Indiana Jones franchise certainly doesn’t need any help on the publicity front. Judging from the tracking -- the research that studios carry out to gauge the level of public awareness of their forthcoming films -- Paramount could neglect to spend a single penny on publicising Indiana Jones and it would still be the most successful film of the year. So why bother to open it at Cannes?

The answer, I suspect, is simply to boost the egos of George Lucas and Steven Spielberg. The film itself may not need any additional attention, but the film’s makers certainly do. The top executives at Paramount, the studio that is distributing the film in both the US and the UK, know that they have to make a big fuss over Lucas and Spielberg in order to keep them on side in case they want them to make a sequel. Throwing a party for them in Cannes is a small price to pay to secure their services.

And that, I think, is what Cannes is really about. It is an opportunity for famous producers and directors to bask in the spotlight, not because they need to in order to sell their films, but simply because they enjoy the attention.

Just back from Cannes where I was promoting the forthcoming film of How to Lose Friends & Alienate People. You can read about my adventures here or see some video footage of Simon Pegg, Stephen Woolley and me promoting the film here.