Don’t you just hate people who say ‘you can’t miss it’?

How do they know? And yes I can actually, I’ve been missing it most of my life thank you very much. There’s nothing that can’t be missed by me.

I arrived at The Majestic in Cannes with the intention of going to a meeting with the sales team of The Spirits Business. But just as I arrived I got a text telling me to register at the Exhibition Centre and meet the others there. You can’t miss it, they said.

I did. So I rang our associate publisher Daisy Jones and asked her where it was. She said “Face the sea and look right”, so I did, and there was the biggest Exhibition Centre you have ever seen; bigger than a Premiership football ground with 20-metre-high letters saying Exhibition Centre. You really couldn’t miss it.

You’d think I’d have taken the hint but when Bert, one of our sales chaps, turned up and said the meeting was cancelled and I should grab a taxi and check in to the hotel, did I follow his advice? No, I decided to walk.

Travel rule one: always get a taxi to your hotel until you know where it is.

“Well it’s a good 20 minutes,” says Bert. “But you just go along the sea front and up to the left a bit. You can’t miss it.”

Fifty minutes later and I think I’m somewhere close to the outskirts of Marseilles, my phone has died and I’m drenched in sweat, my shirt soddenly flapping about me with a disconcerting rhythmic slapping noise. People are crossing the road to avoid me.

I started to suspect I’d gone wrong after 30 minutes walking, because to be frank, Bert doesn’t look like the sort to power walk and 20 minutes to him I figured would be 15 tops for me. And I have to say, his directions were rubbish. Along the seafront and up to the left a bit? More like left, left, right, right, left – and not a bit; a lot.

I eventually check in but I’m getting late for the party now so I jump in the shower, throwing my glasses to the side as I do so. What would I do if I broke my glasses I muse as I shower, them promptly pick them up and snap the frame.

This is not going well. But a few minutes later and after some temporary repairs involving toothpaste and a boiled mint later – don’t ask – and we’re in business.

Cannes is hot, windy and stunning and our beach party in front of The Carlton is a little slice of heaven in the playground of the rich and famous. People on the boulevard above us pull up chairs to watch us – I guess that’s a common pastime here – and as the drinks flow everything starts a little surreal.

Cannes is a strange place. Beautiful and built for fun, it’s also unsettling. You never fully forget your place in the pecking order, and if the designer shops and luxury yachts don’t get you, the people will.

We’re all set to start the party when bizarrely two men in swimming trunks and with chiseled six-pack physiques wander off the beach and across our verandah as if they own the place. Which they probably do.

Then someone asks “Have you met Miss Mexico” and sure enough I turn to find that very close to my side is Miss Mexico. I am five feet eight, she is six feet two and in heels and – how can I put this? My eye level is straight at her chest. I have to lean back slightly to see her face. I’m not quite sure what she’s doing here but I guess it all makes perfect sense when a Mairachi band starts playing…

The party is a success, we drink Champagne, I meet a Mongolian vodka maker and a Venezuelan rum maker, some people dance with the Mexicans and eventually we retire for dinner.

I’m starting to change my opinion of The Spirits Business team. I was under the impression that they were no-nonsense team of ruthless salesmen. In actual fact they’re a soap opera.

Marcus is, like me, a man of Kent rather than a Kentish man – it’s defined by which side of the Medway in Kent you’re born on – but he’s worried that he’s a closet Kentish man and he’s got a thing about Margate beach.

Bert seems to excel in taunting born worrier David in the same way that my eldest boy winds up his younger brother.

And Daisy’s just Daisy – a complete fruitcake. Dinner was a bit like the Mad Hatter’s tea party. Heaven knows what Miss Mexico, and our Guatemalan and Venezuelan friends thought of it all.

So that was day one. Today it’s a whirlwind of meetings and now I’m off to meet the team at the reception desk.

Apparently I can’t miss it…