The theatre of nightmares

Entrapment might not always be the most admirable, let alone efficient, way to snare villains — dirty tricks have a habit of leaving all hands unclean — but there was something entirely apposite about this week’s Daily Telegraph sting operation which exposed alleged match-fixing in English football.

For here, after all, was a meeting with an alleged fixer which was rigged from start to finish, the final outcome — front page headlines, breast-beating, finger-pointing and general moral convulsion — pretty much a forgone conclusion from the moment the parties sat down in a Manchester hotel with hidden cameras and tapes a-rollin’.

Of course, the very fact the fixer was attempting to impress his opposite number suggests we should be wary of taking his every word as gospel. “I do Australia, Scotland, Ireland, Europe, World Cup, World Cup qualifier,” he declared at one point, sounding, as any good salesman should, almost too eager to please.