Because you’re worth it, but you aren’t

It’s a different world in consumer magazines and cosmetics companies – posh parties with airbrushed waitresses and champagne on tap abound. Sometimes the denizens of this airports-and-canapés whirl lean down from on high and offer a tourist visa to the humble toilers on trade titles.

One such instance was the invite extended to certain journalists to La Fête des Rois, hosted by L’Oréal, to toast the New Year. The party climaxed with the distribution of cake to the throng. But this was cake with a difference. Hidden in certain, randomly distributed slices were tiny porcelain Disney figures. Simply find a figure, guests were told, and you win a prize.

Randomness can throw up the strangest patterns, though. The Diary noted that the publishers’ success rate appeared rather higher than the hacks’. How happy a coincidence that the Rois were indeed fêted.