• Only at Cannes Lions would you find Martin Clarke, boss of Mail Online, actually rubbing shoulders with Kim Kardashian, the queen of his Sideboob Alley. The reality TV star, who was joined on the Cote d’Azur by other members of the K clan, contributed to an overall Mail spend that was the subject of much speculation: add air fares, hotel bills and the stonking price of hiring the paper’s monster yacht to the various costs associated with appearances by Kardashian and the likes of US talkshow host Dr Phil, DJ Samantha Robson and Sting (who performed an “intimate gig” on the boat), and Monkey’s rosé-addled but normally reliable number cruncher on the Croisette suggests a total that could be as much as $2m.
• One benefit of the symbiosis between Clarke’s site and his favourite family, it emerged, is that it allows the Kardashians to keep up with the Kardashians. Kris Jenner, the celebrity dynasty’s matriarch, told partygoers Mail Online acts like “my babycam - I can always see where my babies are”.
• Piquantly, in the next berth to the Mail’s floating gin palace was the equally imposing nine-bedroom yacht belonging to the PR man Matthew Freud, a juxtaposition that prompted the Mail’s US editor-at-large Piers Morgan to snort that Cannes was becoming “Chipping Norton on sea”. Clarke, standing nearby, appeared less than happy, although it could have been Freud’s claim that his boat was 3ft longer that curdled the Mail man’s mood rather than Morgan’s zinger.
• Elsewhere at the Cannes Lions (please don’t say Canned Liars), WPP boss Martin Sorrell could be found giving a characteristic definition of success - “seeing your competitors squirm” - in an al fresco panel session that, as it also included will.i.am, gave an enticing sense of what The Voice would be like if he were to replace Tom Jones. Yet the discussion’s most memorable aspect was the contrast between the pop star’s all-black garb and Sorrell’s outfit next to him: normally elegantly fully-suited, the septuagenarian marketing wizard shockingly went for a white t-shirt with no shirt or jacket, as if channelling the young Jean-Paul Belmondo’s look in early 60s nouvelle vague films like Au bout de souffle.
• The “real W1A” phenomenon continues to flourish at the BBC, with the latest example the numerous internal meetings devoted to how potty-mouthed play The Motherfucker with the Hat could be talked about at 7.15pm on Radio 4’s arts show Saturday Review without causing offence and, more important, without giving Beeb-bashing papers a field day. As teasingly trailed beforehand by presenter Tom Sutcliffe on Twitter, an awkward but just about acceptable solution was arrived at worthy of Ian Fletcher, Hugh Bonneville’s BBC Head of Values: the key word could be spoken by pundits but just as “Motherf”, without that troublesome “ucker” element. Most newspapers similarly went for asterisking out the word’s second half, although the Guardian and Observer were less prim and the Sindy (asterisks) and Indy (no asterisks) disagreed with each other, no doubt with impeccable politeness.
• With the great summer institution of newspapers’ A-level results photos several weeks away and anyway not what it was (political correctness having reduced the number of jumping blondes), Glastonbury arrival photos last week showed a capacity to fill the gap: they similarly feature groups of smiling, photogenic young women, with the lack of jumping adequately compensated for (from old-fashioned picture editors’ point of view) by the bare legs and arms of festival-goers in shorts and t-shirts. Most eager were the Telegraph and the Evening Standard, which both put Glasto girls on the front, but elsewhere pics on inside pages added to the impression of an event where men are all but banned while brown-haired and ethnic-minority musos are near extinction. Monkey was particularly intrigued by the approach of the Daily Mail, which traditionally regards Glastonbury as an epicentre of evil somehow installed in Middle England - it after all brings together rock music, drugs, teenagers, nauseating celebs, the legacy of the Sinful Sixties and the BBC - but is also keen on exploiting any opportunity to run pictures of attractive women. The result? An ingenious page 3 photo-spread made up mostly of mother-and-daughter Glasto pairings, with no leggy flesh on display (in contrast to rival papers’ offerings) because all wore jeans or full-length dresses.
