Mourinho decides to pull plug on TV series after being cut off in mid-flow

Jose Mourinho has again decided to silence himself ­ this time by dropping his new television series after just one show.

Jose Mourinho has again decided to silence himself ­ this time by dropping his new television series after just one show. Mourinho, as the new monthly series was to be known, made its debut on Portuguese television on Monday evening. It drew a disappointing audience of just over one million ­ partly because the show was delayed by almost two hours. It was due to start on the SIC channel at 9.15pm but did not get under way until after 11pm and when the live broadcast was made it provided fairly dull viewing.

The Chelsea manager was said to be angry afterwards. The official reason for his decision to drop the show is the realisation that anything and everything he says will be pored over by the media. He was said to be furious yesterday that comments he made were reported by some as a fresh attack on Uefa, for example.

But there is another, unofficial, reason which is also in keeping with Mourinho's nature ­ that he was annoyed because he was cut off in mid flow by the television station because it had simply run out of satellite time for the link from Lisbon back to London. Even the show's host, Pedro Mourinho ­ no relation ­ in the studio looked shocked at how abruptly Mourinho was cut off.

Last night a statement from Mourinho's agent, Jorge Mendes, confirmed that the show had been cancelled. "Jose Mourinho has decided to terminate his collaboration with SIC," it read. "He does not have the freedom to participate in the production of the programme."

It said Mourinho understood how the "limitations of not coming to Lisbon" affected the programme's quality but also launched into another attack on the media, saying that he no longer had "any doubts about the abusive qualities of what he says being adulterated and taken out of context ... throughout the world". Mourinho said he hoped to keep communicating with the Portuguese through other media, such as his newspaper column.

During the programme, however, Mourinho finally came clean over Rui Faria and the hat affair.

During Chelsea's Champions' League tie against Bayern Munich, for which Mourinho was banned from the touchline, Uefa officials asked Mourinho's assistant Faria to lift his hat to prove he was not using an earpiece to receive instructions from the great man himself.

"Rui feels the cold," Mourinho said. "He's worn that hat a lot this season. He's probably a bit superstitious. He was cold. Nothing went on.

"There was a ridiculous pursuit based on a false notion," Mourinho said after reports had suggested that Faria had listened to Mourinho's instructions and passed notes to his colleagues on the bench. "The notes that were circulating were ones we had prepared before the game... [the assistants] were communicating amongst themselves," he said. "I did not create any problems for Uefa," he said. "I respected their decision to ban me for two games even if I did not think it was at all fair.

"Television tried to find out if we did anything but they could not. In the second game, because of this, Uefa tried to find earpieces on Rui but they could not because we played fair."