Pete Cashmore: The real tragedy of the Old Trafford bomb scare

TO begin with, an apology. I got it wrong. As recently as Friday, I wrote in this very newspaper that the Eurovision Song Contest is a duff joke without which the world would be a better place. I have since noted how it has afforded the planet the opportunity to guffaw at horrid Vladimir Putin's Russia losing to Ukraine, an opportunity the planet is gleefully taking up, and wish to reverse my position. Viva Eurovision!

THE comedy of an error that unfolded at Old Trafford at the weekend was bound to have a bit of tragedy thrown in, and so it proved, with fans who travelled from foreign lands for the game having to take their return flights unburdened by memories of goalmouth scrambles and refereeing ineptitude. But particularly heartbreaking was the tale of Jaydeep, a man who has evidently moved from India to the UK just to be closer to his beloved Reds, and whose joy at his first ever Old Trafford trip slowly dissolved live on Twitter with the whole world watching. There he is, outside the stadium with his scarf! There's the match programme he just bought! "It's unbelievable," he wrote, tweet dripping with emotion. "It's glorious, almost in tears". And then the shattering denouement – I'm welling up now myself – "Half the stadium evacuated for some reason..." Weep for Jaydeep.

ALL this left United needing to beat Bournemouth 19-0 last night to make the Champions League. So I guess that, by the time you read this, we'll know how much of a problem match-fixing in football really is.

IT turns out that the United bomb scare is not without precedent – indeed, 20 years ago an England under-21 game was delayed while experts investigated a suspect package at our own Molineux. Codsall-born TV commentator Jacqui Oatley was working that day as a 21-year-old promotions girl, and recalls that the 'device' was a tinfoil-wrapped cheese sandwich. Disposal experts dealt with the package Caerphilly, and there were no Fetalities...

A THOUGHT on the peculiar pop princess Lady Gaga being cast as Cilla Black in a Dionne Warwick biopic, as has been mooted and widely mocked. If the massed thespians of the United States have, in the entirety of cinematic history, failed to master cockney (mentioning no Dick van Dykes) Scottish and Irish accents and so have to revert to plummy Received Pronunciation every time they play anyone British, the odds on a pop star dilettante, whose most significant film role is in Muppets Most Wanted, being able to manage broad Scouse don't look too promising. She's going to end up with a random screech that sounds... Well, not unlike her records.

I'M aware that I am only on my second day sitting in on this column and I've mentioned the Muppets on both days. I'm a bit obsessed, to be honest, and if you can find the YouTube clip of Beaker, Animal and the Swedish Chef performing Danny Boy, you'll understand why.

AND on the subject of muppets... The week began with the sound of a little heart breaking in 10 Downing Street, as Donald Trump – for it is he – admitted that 'it looks like we're not going to have a very good relationship' in reference to David Cameron. I'm sure that Mr Trump meant this in a pejorative way but he may just have boosted the PM's popularity to an all-time high. The Special Relationship could be destroyed forever by a single Cameron tweet of: "Oh YEAH? Well U R not my type either!!!" as a riposte.