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Portugal's leading private television station revealed the priorities of the nation when it broke off an interview with a former prime minister to switch live to the homecoming of Jose Mourinho, the former Chelsea football manager.
The former conservative Prime Minister Pedro Santana Lopes walked off in a huff when his words were cut short so that SIC television - a channel that specialises in Brazilian soap operas - could broadcast the triumphal return of the self-proclaimed "special one" to Lisbon on Thursday.
"To be interrupted because of the arrival of a football coach ... I think the country has gone crazy," Santana Lopes told his interviewer on the SIC Noticias programme.
The former prime minister had been explaining his Social Democratic Party's election plans when he was abruptly upstaged. "I like Mourinho," he insisted afterwards. "But I won't be interrupted by the arrival of a football coach. There are rules."
- Independent
