This feeling was exacerbated by Benedict’s pontificate walking its way into problems of its own making. Who can forget Fr Raniero Cantalamessa making a less than clever comparison between “attacks” on the church, prompted by the sex-abuse crisis, and the sufferings of the Jewish people in the Holocaust. It surely wouldn’t be long before the other wheels fell off the wagon.

After all, how could this dogmatic frontman deal with the list of issues that had large numbers of people speaking out against the church; issues such as Catholic opposition to the distribution of condoms, so increasing large families in poor countries and the spread of Aids? Or the promotion of segregated education; denying abortion to even the most vulnerable women; opposing Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender rights, including universal decriminalisation of homosexuality; failing to address the many cases of abuse of children within its own organization?

This was a long list that could sink any ship and Benedict has offended Muslims, Jews, gays and clerical sex-abuse victims in the course of his pontificate. It would take quite a spin-doctor to sort all this out. In short, Pope Benedict was a PR’s nightmare, with the odds firmly stacked against him. It didn’t help that the voices opposing him were experts on giving great sound bite. War horses like Peter Tatchell told the BBC News Channel: “We profoundly disagree with the Pope’s opposition to women’s rights, gay equality and the use of condoms to prevent the spread of HIV.”

The tour did not start well. The Vatican PR minders flooded the market with excruciatingly embarrassing leaflets produced by the papal visit team, which compared the Mass to a “gig”, the Pope to a “headline act” and liturgists to “performers”. Then Cardinal Walter Kasper prompted controversy on the eve of the visit by comparing Britain to a third world country and refusing to apologise for his comments.

Out of nowhere, however, a sombre suit took control; someone inside the organisation had the sound sense to focus on the Pope’s little known strengths. Letting the real Benedict be seen over the course of this visit has changed his image forever. Suddenly we were being sold an old-fashioned but relevant leader. Serenaded by SuBo, he warned against the culture of celebrity. “Become Saints Not Celebs”; “We live in a celebrity culture and young people are often encouraged to model themselves on figures from the world of sport or entertainment.”; “My question for you is this: What are the qualities you see in others that you would most like to have yourselves? What person would you most like to be?”

Whoever promoted this idea deserves beatification. These images played straight into the tabloid heartland. We were now contemplating the image of a spiritual man, not aloof, austere or out of touch. Impromptu walkabouts and classic photo call opportunities yielded traction – much like those that were forged from Pope John Paul II’s 1982 visit. From this point on it became a love in, a religious Glastonbury. The pomp and ritual of the papal tour was backed up by wall-to-wall media and TV coverage and frenzied and adoring crowds. This was old-fashioned hype magnified.

The demonstrators were neutered by a surprisingly assured frontal assault. Protesters were drowned out by the media’s papal positivity. Part of the problem was that, after months of increasingly shrill rhetoric from the anti-Pope movement, during the actual visit they delivered nothing more than a medium-sized demo that never raised itself beyond the predictable and ordinary. There were no surprises, just placard waving negativity – the media agenda had moved far beyond this.

Church commentators have a tendency to suggest that the origins of past PR gaffes by Pope Benedict are linked to the quality of his advisers and the news management of the pontiff. Well, whoever was in charge of this tour pulled off one of the most remarkable PR coups of the last ten years. Benedict charmed his way through very turbulent waters. The pièce de résistance was to convince the sceptics, with his heartfelt words of sorrow during mass at Westminster Cathedral, that he sincerely wants to tackle the “unspeakable crimes” of paedophile priests, which were covered up for so long by the church. Game, set and match – for this tour at least.

I doubt this extravaganza will have changed his image forever, but it is a salutary lesson for PR folk. No matter how desperate the cause, there is always hope that you can turn events around. There are occasions we don’t need to reinvent or restructure, just capitalize on the opportunities at our disposal. “Our remedies oft in ourselves do lie / Which we ascribe to heaven.”

The article is desperate to get people fulminating about spoilt football players in the wake of England’s World Cup flop, on the assumption that these football “legends” are heroes and idols for the nation’s kids who are betraying their legions of fans by going out and being normal. They are doing nothing of the sort.

British football has moved far too far away from the streets to be able to be seen as the people’s sport any more, and almost nothing of the millions being poured into people like Rooney’s pockets is coming back to the street to allow a new generation of great footballers to develop.

The media, however, still need to build these ordinary, fallible, serially overpaid people into heroes. However, whereas in the past they were built up to be perpetuated as idols (just look at the 1966 World Cup team, who shall forever be used as rods to beat the backs of any English footballers with even an ounce of talent), they are now being built up to be destroyed at the first sign of feet of clay.

The media need these modern footballers to behave badly, as the stories that sell papers are the soap operas, the tales of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. These are the stories that resonate most completely with the 21st century British public; they have been created only to be destroyed for the vicarious thrill of the tabloid- and website-reading masses.

The only extraordinary thing about Rooney is the amount of money he earns for being pretty good at striking a ball towards a net – in the usual run of things, this is a man who would be down the pub most weekends, having a laugh with his mates, not buying mansions. So next time you read an article full of outrage and disappointment, please remember that the media – be it tabloid- or web-based – thrives on badly behaved sports and TV stars and will do all that they can to manufacture the conditions in which said star can fail in style so they can keep on selling you papers.

Still, at least Green is English, where all he faces is ridicule and crushing, sweaty disappointment. In 1994, Columbian footballer Andrés Escobar was murdered after scoring an own goal in the World Cup. If England fail to progress, Green is likely to be vilified by the myopic soccer tribe in full rhetorical flow and be verbally lumped in with paedophiles, murderers and rapists in bitter conversations down the pub.

This despite the fact that, post-match, Green fronted up his error and bravely faced the media, admitting to the gaffe whilst attempting to take control of the narrative. In PR terms, it was a flawless effort in damage limitation. But, reading the papers today, the media continue to sadistically throw salt onto his open wound. We need a scapegoat and Green is the man of the hour.

Is this continued hysteria evidence of our collective derangement? And if so, what will come of it? The media sustain an overbearing optimism that this wretched bunch of sporting icons can somehow fulfil the nation’s sporting dreams. It reaches such a pitch that one might be easily convinced that winning the World Cup glory would somehow cure cancer.

The repetitive conjuring of the spirit of 1966 is damaging overkill. The pressure fashioned by an unhinged media every four years (assuming that England even manage to qualify, of course) becomes a onerous burden that suffocates any prospect of glory. How can intense media scrutiny be a good thing? It is, without doubt, the single biggest destroyer of any promise of success. The American approach – a few lines on the front page and a bigger report in the sports section – seems a lot healthier.

Alleviating the phenomenon of hype might just might give the team a chance to forget themselves on the pitch and put in a World Cup campaign performance that will surprise and delight. Footballing glory used to be as much about unplanned serendipity as anything else. Can anyone remember that time? It seems an ever more distant memory nowadays and would most likely appear miraculous if it happened in the current media climate.

His departure, from an extremely well paid job, sends the clearest possible signal to the paper’s editorial – and to the paper’s readers – that he is serious when he says: “I think this story goes against the national interest because the country is behind the 2018 bid, in which a lot of people invested a hell of a lot of time.”

Gary Lineker has revealed himself as a British sporting hero once again, thanks to his actions. I wonder if the Mail on Sunday will run the next part of its story about Lord Triesman this coming weekend. Can they really allow themselves to be seen to be going against the national interest? I can’t wait to see…

US and UK sport have always been different – from the amount of body armour the Americans wear to play what amounts to rugby to the way the world views the different sports on each side of the Atlantic. Whatever your view of American sport, however, there is no doubt they are well ahead of the game when it comes to using social media in cahoots with big sports events.

You only have to take a cursory look at this year’s Super Bowl to see the difference – this is the year that “social media and the Super Bowl are officially converging” apparently; the year when advertisers, fans, athletes and the NFL are all weighing in with a social media slew of information, opinion and advertising. Twitter is inundated with Super Bowl tweets. And this is for an event that is already swathed in pageantry and hype in the non-digital media.

British sport, by contrast, has only managed to set the social media world alight with the sorry sexual shenanigans of John Terry, the (now ex-) England football captain. And this is in a World Cup year, when you’d hope that the advertisers, fans and athletes would converge in a similar manner to the Americans behind their sport, to push the first vaguely successful football team England’s had in ages towards winning big in South Africa.

But no; the only major trending topic at the moment is Terry’s greed and sex life. In Britain, sport and social media are seemingly united only in gossip, the end result of which is most likely to be the England squad torn apart at the seams.

“Tiger Woods’s nasty bump on the head after his car’s tussle with a fire hydrant has rendered the golfer mostly speechless. It’s all very well that he’s admitted “transgressions” and muttered an apology, but at the heart of the press release he put out is a cry for silence and privacy. Unsurprisingly, perhaps, the Orlando attorney Mark NeJame, who has made his name defending drug offenders and people accused of murder, is the man behind this strategy. The ‘Johnnie Cochran of Central Florida’ has thrown his weight behind the Tiger Woods brand at the formerly squeaky-clean golfer’s darkest hour.

“Attorneys are the new breed of tough image protector – PR spin technicians are losing out to hard-nosed lawyers. But will NeJame’s strategy help his client to regain his flawless veneer of celebrity? Woods’s ignominy is fast becoming one of 2009’s top trending topics and has exposed the media-shy golfer to the dark side of ‘improperganda’.”

To read the full article, click here.

I was also asked for my opinion on the Tiger Woods affair and whether or not he can rebuild his brand’s reputation by Channel 4 News – to read the article, click here.

“If quantum physics is to be believed, there is quite possibly an alternate Thierry Henry in a parallel universe who has just become a sporting god thanks to ‘fessing up to handling the ball. Heralded as one of the greatest publicity stunts of all time, it would nonetheless change the life of the footballer into that of the fairplay god, the one who rewrote the sporting commandments. Fifa would be shamed into rewarding honesty, not the reverse.”

To read the full article, click here.

His performance was a masterstroke, however – a blend of careful honesty and equally careful image management. Coulson came across as forthright and honest – and he looked relaxed in a suit that could easily have graced the pages of GQ. Importantly, he did not battle the MPs he was facing but was carefully compliant.

There’s no doubt that he knows not to make himself the story – he kept his personality in the background and presented the facts as he saw them. It was abundantly clear, from this appearance, that he has been a major influence on the Tory front bench and on David Cameron in particular. Watching him conducting himself told us much about how he is working with the Tories.

He was as impressive as Alastair Campbell used to be in the same role for Tony Blair, although he cuts a very different dash from Campbell. Where Campbell was more of a Nobby Stiles, Coulson comes across as something of a Cardinal Richelieu, albeit a Richelieu who is prepared to admit his mistakes, which is more than can be said for some MPs.

But would he rather be the PR man for a likely future Prime Minister or to have remained in the editor’s chair at the News of the World? He fell on his sword for the sake of the Murdoch empire in 2007 after the phone tapping scandal involving rogue agents, having carefully built a career in journalism. I would imagine that there’s still a sense of loss about that lurking in the carefully polished depths.

At a time when Sunday newspapers are under ever greater pressure to land scoops – whatever the method and consequence – I imagine Coulson’s safe with the Tories for now, especially since he handled himself so effectively under pressure in front of the Commons select committee and given that his media management of the Tories has, on the whole, been equally effective. He certainly proved he’s an asset to David Cameron in front of the select committee and despite calls for his resignation, I would suggest that he’s not likely to leave this job at present.

When you’ve been covered in Olympic glory and deified as a sporting god, your life as you know it stops. You enjoy the attention of sponsors and dignitaries and your brand stands for something. The hours of practice and dedication to your sport are vindicated and even the bullying you’ve received for not quite fitting in pales into insignificance because you are become a ‘special one’. You reap the fruits of the harvest. But you are no longer just a bloke on the street who can go about your daily life like almost everyone else can. Sooner or later your ‘behaviour’ becomes a point of media interest.

So Michael Phelps’ partying and bong-sucking is not just media intrusion, it’s actual news and a severe attack on the Olympian brand he has swum into. A person in Phelps’ position can’t expect their PR minders to be able to do deals on their behalf for every indiscretion; they are now headline news and something like this is always likely to slip through into the public arena. The lesson to be learned here is that, if you want to plunder your brand, you have to consider either living a rigorously monastic life or, in an attempt at normality, consider exploiting a bad boy image.

The pressures of success are often greater than the bitter taste of fame in the sporting arena; the monastic life is unlikely to suit Phelps, but the bad boy image is thoroughly unlikely to further his ability to take advantage of his Olympian fame. He’s drowning, whichever lane he chooses to swim in.