Sir Alex Ferguson was yesterday caught on microphone
asking an aide to ban a reporter who mentioned Ryan Giggs – the player at the centre of a sex scandal controversy.

Ferguson, who was speaking at a press conference
yesterday before Saturday’s Champions League final, was angry when an
Associated Press reporter asked “how important” Giggs was to the team.

“All the players are important, every one of them,” he snapped at the reporter, Rob Harris.

Soon after, a Sky News microphone picked up Ferguson’s comments to a press
officer, Karen Shotbolt, about “the guy that asked the question about
Giggsy … at the press conference”.

Ferguson: “Is he coming on Friday?”

Shotbolt: “The guy with the laptop?”

Ferguson: “Aye. Then we’ll get him. Ban him on Friday.”

Manchester United later admitted to the BBC that Ferguson was unable to bar Harris or any other journalist from Friday’s press conference, because it
was organised by UEFA, the governing body of European football.

However, the BBC already faces a ban from Ferguson. Fot the past few years, the Scot has refused to give the public broadcaster any post-match
interviews following a BBC program about one of his sons.

Ferguson is not the first high-profile person to be caught  making comments that were meant to be private.

Last
month, US President Barack Obama’s closed-door comments at a political
fund-raiser were picked up by an open microphone and recorded by US
television news networks.

Last April, former PM Gordon Brown was heard describing a woman he had just met on the campaign trail as “bigoted”.

In 2004, former English football player and manager Ron Atkinson was fired as an ITV sports pundit uttering a racist diatribe about Chelsea player Marcel Desailly.

“He’s what is known in some schools as a f—ing lazy thick n—-r,” Atkinson was heard remaking.

Atkinson’s
comments about the Frenchman were picked up on microphones he thought were switched off following Chelsea’s Champion League semi-final
game against Monaco.