Even before the photographers had arrived at the scene of Cristiano Ronaldo's performance art destruction of his new £200,000 Ferrari in an underpass near Manchester Airport, (yes the one with personalised number plates 7 CR) the joke texts were whizzing about.
I particularly enjoyed the one which said that when the police arrived at the scene they found the European player of the year rolling around on the ground holding his shin.
Cruel. But we can afford to giggle seeing as how the 23-year-old driver was unhurt and can replace his motor with next week's wages.
Although rumours of free driving lessons when he signs for Real Madrid can most likely be dismissed.
Apart from rock'n'roll, football seems to be the most unsuitable profession for driving.
Thankfully, motoring fatalities in football have been notably fewer than in pop music. If the football equivalent of Eddie Cochran, Marc Bolan, Chris Bell, Cozy Powell and Falco were to take a trip to Dead Man's Curve, we'd be missing the equivalent of a World Cup-winning international midfield.
It's also true to say that rock'n'roll has shown the way for inventive court defence for those involved in an inconvenient prang. When Keith Richards ran his Bentley off the M1, through a fence and into a field near Newport Pagnell, police weren't surprised to find evidence of cocaine and LSD in his pockets. They were, however, taken aback by the guitarist's excuse. In court, Mr Richards claimed the offending items, which included a silver snuff box and a miniature silver flickknife, weren't his. He insisted he was inadvertently wearing someone's else's clothes at the time of the accident!
It might not be wise to seek legal advice from the Rolling Stones' notorious doper. Faced with the loss of their licence, footballers are more likely to heed one of their own. Viv Anderson, Tony Woodcock and Norman Whiteside are just three former pros who give glowing testimonials to a firm of solicitors anxious to help unfortunate footballers.
"Since the advent of speed cameras across the country, it gives me great peace of mind to know that with the help of the experts at Geoffrey Miller Solicitors everything that can be done has been done to ensure that my licence remains clean of penalty points," says Anderson, the former England and Manchester United star in the company's brochure.
While Manchester police say their enquiries into the Ronaldo crash are continuing, the player has shown no signs of disappointment at having written off his two-day-old acquisition.
Slum
I suppose he just had to slum it by taking his Rolls Royce Phantom to work. Yes, the one with the personalised number plater CR7 that cost him £150K.
Either that or the BMW, or one of the Porsches that he also owns. The legs we see some players attempting to hack from under him have earned Cristiano enough to be able to splurge a reported £2 million on new motors since he arrived at Old Trafford five years ago.
When Ronaldo pranged his Ferrari he was able to cadge a lift with team-mate Edwin van der Sar who was driving behind in his £200,000 Bentley. Yet, while Man United tonked Chelsea 3-0 on Sunday, the London club comes out top in a league of players with the most expensive cars in the Premiership.
Exhaustive research by Nuts magazine reveals that the average cost of a Chelsea footballer's motor is £104,835 and their cars' top speed averages 192mph.
Despite Ronaldo's extravagance, Manchester United trail in fourth in the Premier League table behind Arsenal and Liverpool.
My oh my. They may be good at winning things like the Premiership, the Champions League and the Club World Cup, but Man United's stars are never going to become pin-ups with Top Gear enthusiasts.
Take Wayne Rooney for example. When he was still with Everton the lad showed exceptional promise. He passed his driving test at the third attempt and was rewarded by Ford motor company who traded his L-plates (they have yet to appear on eBay) for a sporty version of the Ford Ka, worth a whopping £9,995. The 17-year old was over the moon, where luckily there's little traffic.
Since then, of course, his motoring career has gone downhill.
In 2004, his pride'n'joy, a Cadillac Escalade, collided with a builder's lorry. And the following year he was driving his BMW X5 when he had a bit of a bump with a woman's Nissan Primera in Stockport.
At that point Wayne was "referred to the driver improvement scheme" by the police.
But he likes his wheels, does Wayne. It must be confusing for his wife when he asks: "Where's me keys?"
Apart from the caddy or the beamer, he could be thinking of going for a spin to the shops in his Bentley Continental GT or his Lamborghini Gallardo or even his Aston Martin Vanquish or Chrysler 300C or Mercedes SLK. It's unlikely he'd be looking for the keys to the Porsche 911 that he bought Coleen for her 19th birthday though. The missus would be unlikely to let him near it after that unfortunate headline-grabbing incident with her Range Rover Sport V8.
Wayne was pootling along in the customised Overfinch 4x4 when the machine spluttered to a standstill on the motorway near Warrington. As he watched his childhood sweetheart's car being towed away, it dawned on Wayne that he'd filled the turbo-diesel tank with unleaded petrol.
English football's first superstar, George Best, was also one for the sports cars. Unfortunately the Old Trafford legend ended up doing three months in chokey for drink-driving and assaulting an officer in 1972.
Cropper
He wasn't the only football star to come a cropper with the coppers.
Former England captain Tony Adams and Liverpool midfielder Jan Molby served time for driving offences.
Last year, both Derby County's Bob Malcolm and Norwich City's Matthew Pattison received 20-month driving bans for drink-driving offences. Malcolm, who'd signed for Derby from Rangers in 2006 and was on loan to Queens Park Rangers, was found asleep in his Range Rover parked in the middle of the M1.
It's true to say that ever since Peter Shilton hit a lamp-post while attempting to escape from an irate husband who'd discovered his wife bonking in the England keeper's car late at night, automobiles have proved a source of shame for many footballers.
Not least John Terry, who was shamed last March after his Bentley was snapped parked in a wheelchair spot while the Chelsea captain enjoyed a long lunch at Pizza Express. Terry received a £60 fine, but that was less likely to have bothered £100,000-a-week Terry than the derision he suffered in the British media, which forced him to offer a grovelling apology.
Another to suffer at the hands of the headline writers was troubled Stan Collymore, who clearly hadn't fully thought through the implications of using his distinctive Range Rover, with personalised N1 SVC number plates, while visiting an infamous 'dogging' site in Staffordshire. The resulting headlines saw Stan dropped by his employers at the BBC quicker than Shilt's shorts.
This sort of 'Carry On' behaviour makes Stephen Ireland's motoring disaster seem positively vanilla by comparison.
But the style police became incensed when the one-time Ireland international and Man City star drove to training in a customised Range Rover. Although, really, after some peculiar barnets, questionable pants and that unfortune misunderstanding regarding a dead granny, was pink trim really all that bad?
Okay. Okay! There's no need to get revved up.
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