Gangway, Coronation Street. Back off, Emmerdale. José Mourinho coming through.

Admit it, you were missing him. And perhaps he, in turn, missed you, although I suppose it is possible that, even where he is now, the former Chelsea manager doesn't entirely want for attention. Indeed, how this fiercely private, famously bashful man copes with the thought that on big Champions League nights, living rooms across Europe are basking in the pan-broadcast glow of his repeated image, we can only marvel to think.

In the event, his return to prime-time ITV for Inter Milan v Manchester United was a perfectly adequate Mourinho performance - which, obviously, we had cause to be grateful for, after all this time - if not a vintage one. Unless we missed some stuff, of course, although that's unlikely given that the cameras cut to the dugouts approximately once every 13 seconds - a world and European broadcasting record.

He didn't disappoint the fans, though. He never does. The signature moves were all in place. The quality coat, the impressive scarf. The camera-friendly directional pointing (good traffic cop and bad traffic cop, in the same body). The exaggerated shrug.

The use of the curled top lip as a weapon of mass destruction. The sense that, at certain moments, the chin is tipped up so high in disdain that it is, technically speaking, above the nose. And, of course, the abrupt eruption out of the dugout and into the technical area, as if in flight from an unpinned hand grenade or, at the very least, a shockingly bad smell.

And, overriding all this, the implication that, whatever happens and whenever it happens and whomsoever it happens in front of, it's all about Mourinho, at the end of the night, and no matter what the players, the officials, or the people back in the studio care to do, think or say about it.

Routine post-match hammering for the referee? Check. We are broadly familiar with the concept of the “homer” - the ref who feels under pressure to favour the home side, often colloquially referred to as “this afternoon's official at Old Trafford”. Now, in a bold advance, Mourinho seemed to be trying to introduce, for the San Siro, the idea of the “visitor” - the referee inclined to swing, as it were, the other way. It's an interesting, if somewhat counter-intuitive, notion and we wish him well in developing it.

And, because it wouldn't be Mourinho without some kind of offence (perceived or otherwise) against normal etiquette, we were left with the muted controversy of the missing handshake, the Inter coach having triggered the special escape hatch that allows him to exit the dugout and head for the dressing-room without having to encounter Sir Alex Ferguson at any point along the way.

Now that's - as Paul Daniels likes to say - magic. Indeed, the device was plumbed in for Mourinho by David Blaine, the American illusionist, we wouldn't mind betting. He did something very similar for Michael Jackson a few tours ago - although, if memory serves, Jackson's ambition to disappear on one side of the stage and reappear on the other side almost immediately had to do with a desire to bamboozle his audience, rather than to avoid having to talk to Ferguson. But the basic principle is the same. It's still showbusiness.

Anyway, stand by for episode two in less than a fortnight. It's all set up ominously, isn't it? You can almost see it already - Inter clinching the late equaliser that will send them through on the away-goals rule and Mourinho launching himself down the touchline like an ink pellet off a ruler.

What with the Weymouth business and yesterday's temporary suspension of betting on the future of Rafael Benítez at Liverpool, one hesitates to put it in these terms - but what odds Mourinho continuing right around the pitch this time, rounding each of the corner flags before sliding back into the dugout to complete football's first televised home run? It's what everyone at home has been pleading for.

Elsewhere, there is great news from Britain's Best Dish, where Annabel Croft, the former British tennis star, has just pulled out a really massive tiramisu, to the delight of the judges. “Bring it on,” Mark Nicholas, the first cricketer with county and England A experience to present a televised celebrity cook-off for ITV, said.

That's television, though. One minute you're the terrestrial face of Test cricket; the next, you're in the kitchen alongside half of Hale and Pace, the legendary comedy duo, and saying, “OK, let's get into Norman's curry.” Anway, Annabel and her pudding go forward to the final, where a big performance at the stove would go some way towards redeeming the disappointment of the recent sporting wipeout on Dancing on Ice.

Britain's Best Dish, though: there was a time when the creamy smooth Nicholas would have fancied himself for the title. Now it could end up going to Norman Pace's butter chicken. Things change so fast.