The presence of Dil Se and Soldier actress Preity Zinta, radiant in a golden coloured salwar suit as compere when the festival started by around 6.15 pm meant that the ceremonies would get the mandatory dose of glamour. After all, one of the avowed aims of the festival was to promote bonhomie between Bollywood and the parallel. Trouble right from word go: the microphone had predictably been placed too low, and Zinta dimpled with impatience as an organiser energetically wrestled with it.

Finally, when the mike was in place, Zinta started off on a run of gaffes that may have kept the audience in splits,but had the organisers glowering in their seats.Zinta got the order of guests to be called on stage wrong reading from the wrong paper and jumping the queue to call Shyam Benegal instead of Yash Chopra, who had to hand over an award to Subrata Mitra, cinematographer of several of Satyajit Ray works and later films like New Delhi Times.

Later, as the international FIPRESCI jury, comprising Sangeeta Datta from the UK, Anne de Gasperi from France and Ashley Ratnavibhushana from Sri Lanka, singled out reputed Bengali director Rituparno's Ghosh's Asookha for a special mention, Zinta trilled, can the director come on stage to collect `her' award, is Ritu there, oblivious to the fact that Ghosh is a man.

The FIPRESCI also chose Brazilian director Claudio MacDowell's O Toque do Oboe (The Call of the Oboe) as the festival's best film. After Dr Anil Kankaria, Honorary Consul general of the Brazilian Consulate stepped onto the podium, received the trophy from Deputy Chief Minister Chhagan Bhujbal, posed forpictures, accepted a cheque of Rs one lakh from the festival's main sponsors and was heading towards his seat, Zinta called on ``Dr Anil Kankaria to please come on stage...''

But the mother of them all: Zinta forgot to call on the man who held out the promise of state funding for the cash-strapped festival: Bhujbal. Oops, I forgot, can we please ask Deputy Chief Minister Chhagan Bhujbal to say a few words, she cooed, even as Sudhir Nandgaonkar, programme co-ordinator for the festival, half-rose out of his seat in rage, gesticulating furiously in Bhujbal's direction.

Those `few words' were, of course, about the budgetary allocation of Rs 20 lakh to the Mumbai Academy of Moving Images (MAMI) for conducting the international film festival in the city every year.Blame it on the mike, pleaded a hapless Zinta. Ramesh Sippy, one of the MAMI committee members, too later asked that Preity be forgiven for her ``pretty'' mistakes. Not so pretty if you consider that the festival's purpose -- to develop a taste ingood cinema -- had been slightly derailed by bad taste at the closing ceremony.