Peter Mullen and I were in Cannes last week although we never actually met, for while he was enjoying his cinematic triumph and dodging, profound questions like ''What do you wear under your kilt?'' I had to watch a football match of such of such viciousness it might have passed as Wes Craven's official entry for the film festival.

While I would have loved to have rubbed shoulders with my ebullient fellow Glaswegian, I had to be content with watching his jovial form on television thankfully and timeously demolishing the romanticised Scottish icon which the French were gulled into accepting out of the historical hotch-potch of ''Braveheart.''

Here was your genuine and talented Scottish punter who although bedecked in Highland chic came across as a forerunner of the mass invasion which Paris will witness in only a few more days time.

I had to point out to intrigued French colleagues, entranced by Peter's win and what they described as his ''patois'' that such attire was compulsory if you wished to imbibe in the best taverns off Dalmarnock Road and that the kilted hordes about to hit town would be delighted to answer questions about underwear although with responses which might make a Pigalle peep-show seem like a glimpse of a chastity belt.

Do not under-rate his success here in relation to the World Cup. While the triumph might have been well recognised back home in France, a prize-winner at Cannes is venerated nationally here to such an extent that a squad of Glasgow polis sent out to soothe nerves in an atmosphere getting more jittery by the day could not have done more for the cause of good relations than that solitary figure in the kilt marching to the winner's mike.

In the aftermath of references to him in the media, there were allusions to the Scottish football team but mostly in a wearisomely patron-ising tone of ''Brave Little Scotland'' sort of thing.

While this might be aggravating, I think it masks a growing ground-swell of genuine hope among the locals who will make up the vast majority of the crowd on June 10 that Brazil will somehow come a cropper.

I discovered this on going to see the Brazilians the day after they had arrived at their camp about an hour outside Paris this week.

After you have gone through an accreditation and security check which would be no less stringent for the defence of Plutonium 239, there they all were on a village pitch, which had been marked out with the exact dimensions of the Stade de France, lounging around as if they are bored out of their minds.

If there is such a thing as World Cup fever, then the Brazilians look as if they have overdosed on quinine.

They are getting ready to play with a bunch of amateurs from the local club. The French lads are of such lumpishly differing shapes they might have been drawn by Picasso. The whole exercise is derived, I suppose, from the system used decades ago when Zagallo was a player and when Brazil would turn into locusts against feeble opposition.

What interested me, though, is the apparently appalling ignorance among the Brazilian press about the Scottish opposition and the lack of appetite as I understand it among the players to learn more.

Some of the French journalists are cottoning on to this. As one of them put it to me: ''Perhaps they should knock on the Brazilian dressing-room door just before the game to remind them it is Scotland they are playing.''

Now the French love Brazilian football (who doesn't?) and the local police are estimating that up to 15,000 people a day have been flocking into the village of Ozoir-La-Ferriere not only to try to see them training but to wallow in the yellow-and-green merchandising carnival that has swamped the place. The sheer magnitude of this response to their presence would make you believe that the entire French population will be willing them on to win.

Not so. They are admirers and in awe of their reputation, but no more than that.

The Brazilians are, in fact, grossly over-exposed throughout the media and, since the French have never needed lessons in debunking and lampooning, the people I talk to here would dearly enjoy egos being deflated.

I am sure, therefore, the Stade de France is going to reach out to us in a surprisingly warm way. Then it is up to us. That is the imponderable bit. But at least Scotland have arrived already in style.

The kilt and an accent entranced Cannes and France. I tell people here with the greatest confidence that in winning his prize at the festival Mullan has been no more than a warm-up act for Craig Brown.