Low life | 5 July 2018

At 7 p.m., panting, I knocked on the door of room 201 of the Hotel InterContinental, Marseille, expecting it to be opened by Patrick Woodroffe, the man who has splendidly lit Rolling Stones gigs for the past 33 years, who would, I believed, hand over two tickets. With any luck, and on the strength of our slender acquaintance, I hoped these tickets would be upgraded to seats a little closer to the action than the ones we had paid quite enough for. Eventually, the door was opened instead by a timid woman wearing a hijab. She blinked at the words ‘Rolling Stones’ but they meant nothing to her. We ran back downstairs to the concierges’ desk. ‘Nope,’ they said, checking a stack of envelopes. ‘Nothing for you here under that name.’

We ran down the hill to the sunny old port and took the underground, changing lines once and emerging on to a shady street where we joined a dense multitude headed for the velodrome.