Even half a century ago, newspaper placards trumpeting supposedly dramatic events tended to be treated with a certain cynicism. Driving home to Kent on 6 February 1958, the author and football fan H E Bates, a former reporter, caught sight of one reading "Manchester United In Air Crash" and did not bother stopping the car. His reaction, he later wrote, was: "I am getting too old to be caught by newspaper screamers."
Arriving home, he switched on the six o'clock television news, whereupon: "I sat listening with a frozen brain to that cruel and shocking list of casualties."
Some 200 miles north, Matt Busby's son Sandy, a reserve- team player with Blackburn Rovers, was hurrying home to celebrate his 22nd birthday when a friend drew his attention to Manchester's version of the placards: "United In Plane Crash." "I just walked on," he recalled last week. "I was thinking, 'Are the headlines just built up?' And then I thought I'd better phone home. An aunt of mine was down from Scotland, she answered and she was frantic. She said, 'Sandy, get home'."
With hard news coming out of Munich only in dribs and drabs, the Busby household was a natural gathering point for friends and relatives. "The girlfriend of [Daily Express journalist] Henry Rose was round and when the news came through about Henry, someone had to take her home because she was in a right state," Busby Jnr said. "Then Frank Swift's wife came in with her daughter. They lived just round the corner and they weren't getting any information either. Then it did come through, that the great Frank had died."
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