The Wimbledon tennis championships start today, so naturally the UK can look forward to a fortnight of rain.

Well, you’ll all be delighted to know that out here in Cannes – where the Festival of Creativity (note the removal of the word ‘advertising’) is in full swing – the skies are blue and the sun is shining.

And it’s not just the weather that seems bleaker in the UK, apparently much of the advertising is well below the standards being set by other countries too.

That’s certainly the case if the shortlists so far are anything to go by. We’re already running out of ways to write headlines about ‘UK disappointment’ as juries opt to nominate work from Brazil, Spain, France, Singapore and the US instead.

Hell, Bahrain and Costa Rica both secured as many nominations in the Press category as the UK did. And in Radio, any country that saw one of its agency’s campaigns make the shortlist meant it had at least one more nomination than us.

But let’s look on the bright side (and let’s face it, hangovers will mean that very few people will be able to do that later in the week), there’s still a number of categories with shortlists yet to be announced, and the UK always tends to bounce back later in the week when the Cyber and Film winners are revealed.

And you can bet that whether people are celebrating or commiserating, the Gutter Bar will still be full of advertising’s biggest names tonight and every other night during the festival. We wouldn’t have it any other way.