It is just over 12 hours until kickoff for the world’s press in Cannes covering this year’s film festival. Looking out from a swanky Wifi cafe at the Palais des Festivals, the view is the picture of tranquility — gleaming yachts bob up and down in the marina, couples stroll along the Croisette seafront as the sun sets, and glamorous girls serve coffee to reporters still tapping away at their laptops.

The calm won’t last. Reporters are advised to start limbering up for their first scrum. That is likely to be a “media event”, otherwise known as a chaotic stunt, to publicise “Kung Fu Panda“, a Hollywood animation comedy coming to town. Minutes later, there is the press screening of the opening film “Blindness”, which officially gets the 2008 edition of the festival underway.

The list of potential “flashpoints”, when sleep-deprived, highly-strung hacks attempt to get into venues more often than not too small to accommodate them, is endless.

But, as the old saying goes, someone’s got to do it, and few, if any, here in Cannes, would want to give up their place.