Strange, because according to the Manchester Evening News earlier this week, the MEN Arena in Manchester (which the paper sponsors) is the most popular… ahead of Madison Square Garden in New York.

THE M.E.N. Arena is officially the most popular entertainment venue on the planet – for the second year running.

A total of 1,245,196 concert-goers have flocked through the doors to see some of the world’s biggest acts like Take That, Kylie Minogue, Westlife and Justin Timberlake over the past year.

The latest figures from Pollstar show that Madison Square Garden, in New York, came second with ticket sales of 1,230,433 while The O2, in Greenwich, came third with 1,209,376 after it opened for business in June.

So what gives? Well, who the hell cares, frankly. I suspect the Dome is using some kind of figures projection taking into account that it was only trading for six months, whereas the Manchester venue has actually achieved – and had verified – the winning feat over the whole twelve-month period. Maybe.

Seems a bit cheeky on the part of O2 but I doubt anyone involved felt the need to question the finer detail. The PR company would presumably sell rubber johnnies into the Catholic Herald if someone wrote them a cheque, while the One Show is so desperate for items that tonight’s programme featured a whimsical item about ash trees and Lenny Henry pretending to be a Scouse wedding DJ. Seriously. So, you see everyone – and yet no-one – is a winner.

Anyway, I’m going to ring up the One Show‘s researchers to tell them that the ginnel between our house and number 54 is the most popular musical venue in the world and that Jethro Tull are booked to play a 400,000-a-night sell-out show for 276 nights running to from March to December. Or, better still, employ a London PR firm to do it for me. It can only be a matter of time before the camera crew turns up.

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The author Joanne Harris was on there as a guest and Campbell was talking to her about a religious experience she supposedly once had. He reminded her of the time she fell off a horse, cutting herself. Then a dog came along and licked her, miraculously healing the injury and leaving no scar.

Pause to reflect on the idiocy of this statement for a moment.

Still with me? Good. Harris, with the understandable look of a woman falsely labelled a fantasist, appeared totally confused, remarking that she didn’t recall the incident but admitting that dog spells God backwards. Campbell said it was on the internet. Harris was definitely of the opinion that it had never happened. Everyone looked baffled and then moved on.

What can it mean?

In fact, the incident is out there on the web. It’s featured on Helium, the site “where knowledge rules”. But Joanne Harris isn’t an especially uncommon name and it’s fairly obvious that a bestselling novelist wouldn’t be contributing random articles to a site aimed at aspiring writers and amateur critics. In fact, the dog/God incident is recalled by an entirely different Joanne Harris, who appears to be an expert on “edible art cookies” but is in no way the author of Chocolat.

The cock-up has echoes of the farce involving Ronnie Hazlehurst last week, where, upon the composer’s death, several media outlets, including the BBC, the Times and the Guardian falsely claimed he had written the S Club 7 hit Reach because of a joke insertion on Wikipedia (since corrected).

The lesson? If you’re going to research a guest on a chat show, it perhaps pays to use sources other than Google. Unless, of course, you’re desperately attempting to enliven an otherwise stilted debate about religion. Here endeth the sermon.

Update, Monday 15 Oct: Someone who was in the studio during this incident has been in touch. They report that after the programme, Campbell was visibly livid and “glared” at a member of the production team before leaving the set. I’m also told that the presenter is a “complete cock”. Well I never.