It was a sight to raise the hackles of many Manchester United fans: Joel Glazer, a director and a member of the family who controversially acquired the world-famous club, 4,400 miles from White Hart Lane, where United had trounced Tottenham Hotspur 4-0, and munching happily on a hot dog.

United fans disaffected with the Glazer family’s takeover of their club would love to use in evidence against them the fact that Glazer preferred to go to the Super Bowl in Miami on Sunday night rather than travel to Britain to watch the club his family own. But Glazer had watched the United match on satellite television at his Palm Beach home after spending an hour “throwing ball” with Tom Cruise, as you do. Then he was off to Dolphin Stadium for Super Bowl XLI.

And who can blame him for attending the biggest sporting night of the year in the United States? The Glazers own the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, one of the 32 American football franchises who could teach the Barclays Premiership a thing or two about how to run a sport. The National Football League franchise owners run a system that ensures competition between all the teams — unlike the Premiership, which is dominated by the four richest clubs.

Then again, with United one of the four and riding high, perhaps the Glazers like the Premiership status quo.

Cruise was nowhere to be seen at the Super Bowl, but, take The Insider’s advice: never sit near a Hollywood superstar during a big game. Your humble correspondent was four rows from John Travolta, but the equality stopped there. When Travolta wanted to use the “rest room”, a path was cleared by minders, while the rest of us had to wait.

Also somewhere else was Ken Livingstone, the Mayor of London, who travelled home from Miami to watch the Super Bowl in Battersea Park with 4,000 Londoners. His mission in the US was to announce the game between the Miami Dolphins and the New York Giants this year at Wembley, part of a drive to recapture American tourists. Visitors to London from the US dropped 25 per cent after the attacks in the US on September 11, 2001 and have not returned because of fears over terrorism.

Livingstone would have appreciated, then, the $9 million (about £4.5 million) security operation that included a nofly zone over Dolphin Stadium, with the area patrolled by US Air Force fighter jets, cars banned from the stadium perimeter and intensive US Coast Guard patrols. Better safe than sorry.

theinsider@thetimes.co.uk