Cannes is known for its attention-seeking publicity stunts, many of which are gently ridiculous — like the time that Jerry Seinfeld jumped off the roof of the Carlton while dressed as a giant bee to promote his new animated film ‘Bee Movie’. “They tell me that Scorsese did the same thing last year for The Departed,” he joked afterwards. In 2016, meanwhile, after many years of jewel-heists, assaults and robberies at the Festival, a French company called Oraxy thought it would be a fun idea to send six men in terrorist-grade militia gear and black masks on a speedboat to storm the jetty at Hotel du Cap Eden-Roc in order, somehow, to promote its new broadband offering. It didn’t go down particularly well. In 2001, to promote the film ‘24 Hour Party People’ about the Happy Mondays, the marketing team took their inspiration from a scene in the biopic, in which Shaun Ryder accidentally poisons an entire flock of pigeons. And so they commissioned the creations of hundreds of worryingly realistic fake dead pigeons and dumped them onto the Majestic Beach — completely horrifying members of the public, who thought they were real. Chaos ensued. “A pigeon landed on the table of a top French TV honcho,” Variety reported at the time. “Security guards threatened the actors with cans of mace. Joel and Ethan Coen, also lunching at the restaurant, reportedly were highly amused.”