3,000 travelling Old Trafford fans rode the emotional rollercoaster in an awesome arena.

Automotive abuse on a Basil Fawlty scale was the reaction of Carlos Sainz and his co-driver Luis Moya (pictured left) at the close of the Network Q Rally of Great Britain yesterday. Within 300 yards of a finish that would have secured Sainz a third world title, his car erupted in flames and ground to a halt. Bang went the championship and all hell was let loose as the Latin pair vented their frustration on the unfortunate Toyota rally car whose extraordinary demise had cost them so dearly. The outburst of road rage recalled Basil's eruption (above) and attack on his own car when it broke down in an episode of Fawlty Towers. Instead the world title went to the Finn, Tommi Makinen

IT IS always something of a surprise when the Britain's smoothest man pops up on TV, as if he were still at the centre of national life. Didn't he use to be Cecil Parkinson? Something rather big in the Eighties, a spot of bother with an affair? What on earth is he up to these days?

Soaps continue to exercise their stranglehold on ratings. Only the movie Addams Family Values in the Top Ten and, lower down, Fawlty Towers and Men Behaving Badly offer respite. Programme Total (millions)

LADBROKE IS unlikely to lift the gloom which has engulfed hotel shares when it produces its interim figures this week.

John Cleese is off to the rainforest to find something furrier and more elusive than pythons.

Suppose that many mothers say that they'd rather not be ambassadors now that they have little Tarquin

THE SUCCESS of Dad's Army is summed up in a line from its first episode when the bumptious Capt Mainwaring says: "The machine-guns could have a clear field of fire from here to Timothy White's, if it wasn't for that woman in the telephone box."

WHEN Tony Blair rolled out an obedient line of pop stars and celebrities at the General Election and waxed lyrical about Cool Britannia, it was no surprise to find Ben Elton featured prominently among his supporters.

MUSIC

Ann Treneman meets the 28-year-old editor of a new magazine that isn't afraid to be feminist

PAUL McCANN asks (17 February): "Fresh from taking the bad behaviour from Men Behaving Badly . . . whatever will the Americans do to Basil and Sybil?"

BASIL would be livid. Fresh from taking the bad behaviour from Men Behaving Badly, excising the drinking, smoking, drugs and jokes from Absolutely Fabulous, American television has its heart set on ruining another British comedy classic.

THEY DON'T write plays like they used to. Two three-act dramas opened this week, both set in France. One is a premiere, the other 70 years old; one is by a prominent playwright, the other by an insurance clerk making his debut. They offer strikingly opposing views as to how to write for the stage. They could have been written by different sides of the brain.