Does Barbra Streisand really like black pudding and chips?

So when Barbra Streisand professed a love of gristle-filled black puddings her northern audience looked baffled.

Between torch songs she assured them she'd spent the afternoon in the local chip shop and just loved those puddings. Frankly, they didn't believe her and laughter broke out among the 14,000 fans in Manchester.

Nobody who charges £600 a ticket and makes outrageous backstage demands, they reckoned, is going to settle for something that goes down well with tripe.

And yesterday the diva's shallow insistence on being one of the common people backfired when it emerged that flunkeys had researched local lore so she could thread it through her stage act.

So inept was their investigation that on Tuesday night the Manchester audience was treated to Liverpool football club's anthem You'll Never Walk Alone.

That was after the black pudding reference but around the same time as Miss Streisand, 65, assured them she also liked Cumberland sausage. This may be true but they're made 100 miles away.

She then claimed one of her favourite spots in the whole world was a local park so obscure that few in the audience had heard of it.

What the fans rapidly noticed was that 'improvised' patter about her local jaunts was being read from an autocue suspended from the roof of the MEN Arena where she was performing.

Kicking off the her first British tour in 13 years, Miss Streisand asked fans who had paid between £75 and £550 a seat: 'How could I come to Manchester and not have some black pudding?'

Then she truly put her foot in her mouth, referring to Manchester United as 'the world's most popular football club' when at least half her audience would have been fans of deadly rivals Manchester City and Liverpool.

Later there was her reference to Manchester tarts, allegedly pastry-encased concoctions of custard, banana and jam but in reality more often found at bus stations.

Cynics questioned whether she would actually have gone on a tour of the city as she flew into the airport on a private jet before being transferred to the arena by silver limo.

There, black pudding was probably not included among her numerous backstage demands.

Immediately after the performance, Miss Streisand was driven to the five-star Hilton hotel where she freshened up before being flown out of the city. Yesterday it emerged that Richard Alexander, a member of her production team, had researched local references to buoy her performance.

Among his targets was Pete Spencer, sports editor of the Manchester Evening News, who was asked whether the song You'll Never Walk Alone would go down well in the city.

A source said: 'Apparently Richard was warned it would not go down well at all as it was a Liverpool football anthem.

'This must have had some effect because when it came to the stage performance Barbra did not sing it as she had done at the Emmys in 2001.

'Instead her backing singers sang it and dedicated it to the victims

of September 11 beforehand to make the distinction.

'Clearly, though she was given some duff advice from somewhere else and her local patter left the audience bemused.

'Although she was spot on in referring to Manchester as the first industrialised city, her references to sausages and black pudding, which is made from pigs' blood, were highly unlikely considering her Jewish background. 'Her claim to have visited a chippy raised eyebrows and had people laughing for all the wrong reasons. She d i d n' t s e e m t o get it.'

Miss Streisand was set to continue touring in Ireland, where locals are bracing themselves for references to leprechauns, Paddys and the potato famine.

Her spokesman yesterday insisted she HAD visited a chippy but the black pudding and sausage references were 'just light banter.'

Manchester councillor Pat Karney said: 'She obviously thinks everything north of Watford is called Manchester, which is fine by us.'