Viacom International Media Networks has appointed Chris Shaw as executive vice president, managing director, of its advertising sales division, Be Viacom.

Shaw has joined from NBC Universal International Television where he served as senior vice president, global head of advertising sales.

“Chris has broad experience managing international ad sales operations for large-scale multinational entertainment companies, and he’s also worked for some of the world’s biggest media and advertising agencies, plus one of the best known names in global talent management,” said VIMN’s president and CEO, Bob Bakish, to whom Shaw reports.

“He understands how to elicit the best results from sales teams working at the global and local levels, and is in tune with the demands and expectations of a wide range of clients. His unique mix of skills will help strengthen VIMN as the media partner of choice for brands looking to engage audiences around the world in this complex and fast-shifting environment.”

Effective 16 September, Shaw becomes responsible for growing advertising and sponsorship revenues across VIMN’s portfolio of brands and businesses, including MTV, Nickelodeon and Comedy Central, and across all platforms outside the US.

Based in London, he will also oversee VIMN’s country-specific local ad sales teams and will manage the Be Viacom international ad sales team in London, which has responsibility for multi-territory deals and key international accounts.

Grazia magazine has launched #Grazia360 to spotlight the world’s biggest fashion weeks.

The multi-platform campaign will look to showcase exclusive interviews, behind-the-scenes footage and social media takeovers from the world’s greatest designers.

The Fashion Week 360 channel will be split into different sections for each of the cities and one for the latest posts and will take a prime spot on the homepage. Digital ads on Grazia Daily will also promote the #Grazia360 content.

Susannah Frankel, fashion director at Grazia, said: “With our #Grazia360 campaign, our readers will get an exclusive insight into each of the fashion weeks.”

All content will be shared across Grazia’s various platforms including Instagram, YouTube and Twitter, using the hashtag #Grazia360, while a weekly Facebook campaign will look to drive traffic to the content and Pinterest will also run a designated 360 pinboard which will be promoted as part of their London Fashion Week coverage.

Three quarters of women support the government’s internet porn opt in proposal and the majority think we need new laws to tackle trolls according to new survey from market research company Kantar.

Seventy one per cent of mothers especially, were in favour of better internet controls in order to protect their children from the ‘pornification’, whereas only 57 per cent of woman without children backed the plans. Older women felt very strongly about the issue with a massive 94 per cent of over 65s supporting making online porn opt-in.

When asked whether they support the government’s plans to create an internet porn opt-in, 75 per cent of women were in favour, with 59 per cent strongly in favour; this compared with 43 per cent of men in favour, only 23 per cent of them strongly.

Finally, despite relatively few people falling victim to a troll, 83 per cent of the British public thought we need new laws to tackle trolls on sites like Twitter and Facebook. Women especially felt more strongly about this issue, with 67 per cent strongly agreeing we need new laws compared to 48 per cent of men.

Dr Michelle Harrison, CEO of Kantar, TNS BMRB, said: “For some time the concerns around internet porn and its impact on children have been growing, but we are now reaching something close to a tipping point on the need to act.

“Women, and particularly mothers, are anxious about its effects. Alongside this is recognition that internet trolling can have devastating effect on young people. Once again, this ‘new’ media is old enough for it to have become a mainstream issue at the heart of public policy.”

The poll interviewed a representative sample of 1,234 people. All interviews were conducted as online self-completion.

Jamie Oliver has unveiled Jamie’s Trattoria, his newest restaurant venture, with design by Blacksheep.

The tenth restaurant Blacksheep has designed for Jamie Oliver over a four-year period, the agency was tasked with a no ‘design approach’ as the brand sought to create something relaxed and laid back that would appeal to the local community.

Justin Hardy, director of design and development for Jamie Oliver, said: “We have worked with Blacksheep for years now and were especially impressed with their interpretation of the Trattoria concept and its execution and project delivery.”

The restaurant looks to appeal to all people across the local community; with local noticeboards, book exchanges and board games all used to reinforce the local look and feel.

Lead Designer, Emma Freed of Blacksheep, commented on completing the project on a tight schedule: “Although we didn’t fully appreciate it at the time, this process in itself actually served to add to that slightly ‘scattered’ charm we were trying to create. Our vast experience of working with the Jamie’s brand meant we were well aware of Jamie Oliver’s passion for all things authentic and natural, which underpinned much of what followed.”

Jamie’s Italian wanted to create a smaller, more intimate dining experience for their new venture in Richmond.

The BBC has launched Wolfblood 2: Leader of the Pack, a multiplayer game of CBBC’s Wolfblood series for children, developed by games design agency Chunk.

To ensure brand accuracy, Chunk worked with show writers to ensure the game integrated closely with episodes and that gameplay provided extra storyline detail.

Players take on the character of a ‘wolfblood’ in the action platform runner scrambling through woods perilous with slopes, cliffs and creatures. Wolves run through tightly designed paths and the game is simply controlled with a single button. Players must complete missions and challenges in order to unlock further levels and new missions.

The game extends themes from the show, with ‘challenges’ linking closely with storylines and a stream of new missions released to tie in with episodes as they are broadcast.

In single player mode, the aim is to complete the missions and reach the top of leaderboard as leader of the pack. The game also has multiplayer modes in which players take on ‘shadow wolves’, recordings of other players’ performances.

Friends can compete against each other by sending and receiving their best shadow wolf runs or compete against the shadow wolves of higher-ranking members of the player community in random ‘wild wolfblood’ challenges.

Donnie Kerrigan, founder and managing director of Chunk, said: “Our ambition is for Wolfblood 2: Leader of the Pack to genuinely compete for children’s attention against the best games around.

“In Wolfblood 2, we’ve got a great children’s IP, the integration of show stories and game challenges, the chance to race against friends, and what we believe is a really exciting and re-playable game are all exciting, unique ingredients that we hope will help it be a children’s favourite.”

Birds Eye is set to repitch its advertising and design accounts as the new chief executive of the Iglo-owned brand looks to overhaul the label.

According to the Telegraph, Elio Leoni Sceti wants to shift perceptions of frozen food from one of ‘desperation’ to ‘inspiration’.

It has been suggested that original mascot Captain Birds Eye – who was replaced by Clarence the polar bear - is unlikely to make a reappearance after market research suggested it ‘may not be appropriate’.

AMV BBDO and McCann currently handle the advertising for Birds Eye.

Seventy four per cent of all pirated downloads were committed by just two per cent of internet users according to a Kantar study for Ofcom.

Kantar were commissioned by Ofcom to conduct a pilot survey, comparing online, telephone and face-to-face interviewing methods, with the objective of establishing the most effective survey methodology to monitor illegal file-sharing among consumers.

It emerged that almost a quarter (22 per cent) of all UK downloads are in breach of copyright and last year there were 1.5 billion illegal downloads with films comprising a third of all pirated content. Additionally, Fifty eight per cent of all internet users have downloaded or streamed at least one illegal item in the last year.

Those who download pirated goods were more likely to purchase legal downloads as over a three month period pirates spent £26 on goods compared to £16 from those who did not infringe copyright.

It was revealed that the most common excuse for piracy was that internet users believed they had already spent enough money on content, and that legal downloads were too expensive. Conversely, only one in five pirates said they would cease downloading illegal content if they received a letter from their ISP threatening legal action.

Awareness of paid for TV streaming services such as Netflix, Google Play and Tesco's blinkbox ‘rose significantly’ between March and May reinforcing the belief that if such services were made cheaper and more widely available pirates would start paying for content.

On illegal downloads, the Kantar report, said: “The true impact on the core media industries is one that has been highly disputed.

“Whilst the majority of studies appear unanimous in the opinion that such activity is holistically damaging, there is also evidence that suggests file-sharing is an easy scapegoat for declines in sales, and in some respects can also be considered a promotional catalyst.”

In the last year, pirated music tracks in the UK decreased by a third to 199 million which is good news for the music industry who saw revenue increase by 0.3 per cent.

The Daily Mail has reached an out of court settlement with Ryanair following a libel action brought against its parent company, Associated Newspapers, by the no-frills airline.

Ryanair CEO launched the legal action to defend the airlines reputation for safety after the paper repeated claims of fuel and safety issues that were first made in a Channel 4 Dispatches documentary.

A statement read out by Associated Newspapers following the deal set the record straight that Ryanair fully complied with EU safety rules.

O’Leary himself commented after this turn of events: “We are very pleased that the Mail has acted promptly to set the record straight in relation to our safety standards - time was of the essence.

"We employ 9,500 aviation professionals and today's settlement vindicates that the quality of work they do in delivering what the IAA (Irish Aviation Authority) has confirmed is one of the safest airlines in Europe."

Legal action remains ongoing against Channel 4 following its broadcast of claims alleging that three Ryanair flights were forced to make emergency landings after running out of fuel.

In a statement following the allegations Ryanair said: “We accept that the official report produced by the Irish safety agencies confirmed that all three aircraft took on extra fuel," he said.

"All three aircraft flew for over one hour more than planned due to adverse weather and diversions from Madrid to Valencia. All three aircraft fully complied with EU safety rules when landing safely in Valencia."

A fresh study conducted into the psychological effects of social media conducted by the University of Michigan has concluded that Facebook serves only to make us lonely and less sociable.

The study will come as bad news to Facebook’s growing army of 1.1bn members as a growing awareness of the perils presented by technology for social interactions become evident.

These conclusions followed the observation of 82 participants who were asked to complete an online survey about their Facebook use five times a day over a period of two weeks.

Commenting on the resulting findings psychologist Ethan Kross observed: “The more people used Facebook at one time point, the worse they felt the next time we text-messaged them; the more they used Facebook over two weeks, the more their life satisfaction levels declined over time.”

Surprisingly these trends were not moderated by the number of Facebook friends or their perceived closeness.

Krispy Kreme, in collaboration with Will London, have launched Dougnuttery, a novel campaign which will see one lucky doughnut fan win a year’s supply of their favourite sugar rush every month.

Anyone fancying a sweet toothed flutter is invited to register their details for the draw which is being trailed on print, instore, online and social media.

Judith Denby, Chief Marketing Officer of Krispy Kreme said "Sharing and fun are central to everything Krispy Kreme does. Doughnuttery will certainly be fun to play and definitely give winners more than enough treats to share".

Paul Hamilton, Managing Partner at Will London said, "Krispy Kreme is an easy brand to get excited about. Whether you’re working on it or playing it, The Doughnuttery can only add to that excitement.”

The first monthly prize draw is set to take place on the 27 September.

News UK has announced the appointment of Victoria Newton as the editor of The Sun on Sunday.

Part of a multi-million pound investment to strengthen the journalism and production of The Sun, a major marketing campaign will herald changes in the look and content of The Sun on Sunday this weekend.

The campaign will the comprise of TV and in-paper, with the TV ad set to break tomorrow night during the X Factor

Newton said: "I am thrilled to be given the opportunity and the resources to take Britain's number one Sunday newspaper to an even better place. The Sun has a formidable reputation for exclusive, hard hitting and investigative journalism and alongside the humour and headlines, showbiz and comment I look forward to securing The Sun firmly as the home of the best Sunday stories.”

She will report to David Dinsmore, editor of the Sun, who said of the appointment : "Victoria is ideally placed to build on the Sun's long-standing success and ensure our readers our amused, informed, provoked and championed every Sunday, as they are during the week. I am delighted to welcome her to this vital role.”

Dinsmore was announced as the new editor of The Sun in June.

Russian tech firm Nettlebox has set tongues wagging with the debut of a holographic real-time 3d display that the firm believes could transform the gaming, exhibition and architecture sectors.

Consisting of a 3d plasma display surrounded by four fisheye lens infrared cameras the set up can track the movement of someone wearing a pair of 3d specs to present a stable visual environment which is sustained even with movement.

Set into a tabletop the gadget creates a sunken world rather than one bursting out into the living room but is nevertheless capable of sustaining the illusion even in ‘noisy’ environments.

Nettlebox co-founder Andrei Desyatov, said: “With this technology users can see a 3D screen from all viewpoints, from all angles, and see a 3D object in front of him. The brain believes that it’s a real object because the illusion is very strong. We are tracking the user’s position very fast.”

At a hefty $28,000 a pop however the gizmo isn’t likely to be gracing too many homes anytime soon but is expected to find a market at trade shows and exhibitions.

Ella’s Kitchen has announced the appointment of Parker Williams Design to work on its packaging design.

The organic baby and toddler food company, founded in 2006, help babies and toddlers eat healthier food and help develop healthy eating habits that last a lifetime.

Kate Bradford, managing director at Parker Williams commented: “It is a joy to be working on such a distinctive and much loved brand. Ella’s Kitchen has a very clear vision and great set of values and we are delighted to be part of the team helping to take that forward through its packaging.”

Ella’s Kitchen brand a subsidiary of The Hain Celestial Group.

This issue of The Drum includes a look at McLaren's branded content strategy and explores how mobile is fuelling the shopping revolution.

A winning formula
As McLaren gears up for the release of its film Rush, Jessica Davies catches up with the brand and special effects company Framestore to discuss its computer-animated series Tooned and its journey into the world of branded content.

A colourful future for Nokia?
Following Microsoft's buyout of Nokia's mobile business, The Brand Union's Veb Anand looks at the future for the Finnish brand.

Girl Guides
OgilvyOne's Annette King is the latest in The Drum's series profiling influential women in digital.

Retail
The Drum’s retail focus includes the ‘best shops in the world’ according to Saatchi & Saatchi X’s Georgia Barretta-Whiteley, and a look at how mobile is fuelling the shopping revolution.
This issue also includes:

• Analysis of some of the industry's hottest topics, including a look at the future of the smartwatch
• A round-up of some of the best creative work
• A look at what industry leaders would change about advertising – if they had the chance

The Drum Digital Census supplement
This issue of The Drum is accompanied by The Drum Digital Census supplement, a comprehensive review of the digital marketing landscape in the UK. Please note, this supplement, available to subscribers, contains top line findings only. A comprehensive report, containing all tables and detailing all findings and analysis, as well as profiling all 172 agencies analysed in the research, is available to purchase here.

Low-res versions of the 13 September issue of The Drum and accompanying Digital Census supplement are available for subscribers to download by signing in below.

Morrisons new kids’ food range, Just for Kids, has unveiled its brand identity with Elmwood.

Just for Kids launches in stores nationwide throughout September across chilled ready meals including spaghetti bolognese, sausage and mash and chicken casserole, with the proposition ‘Kids at Heart, Mums in Mind’.

Kelly Broomhead, senior account manager at Elmwood, said: “We’re really thrilled with the way the new look and feel strikes the perfect balance between appealing to kids’ sense of fun while also shouting about the nutritional value and provenance of the food for parents.”

The packaging combines simple illustration with a textured background to give the impression of a tablecloth.

Discussing the new packaging, Carol Turner, strategic design manager at Morrisons, said: “The new Just for Kids concept really captures everything that’s so important about the range. We’re delighted with the way Elmwood’s designs bring to life the fun and enjoyment of mealtime for kids, while also reassuring mums and dads about the value of what their kids are eating. We look forward to seeing the new brand roll out across more categories in the coming months.”

The Just for Kids line is set to be extended for the next six months to include milk, yogurts, frozen, chilled juice and prepared fruit.

ITV has announced that it will be adding a number of new interactive video formats for ITV Player audiences following the success of Ad Explore.

ITV Commercial launched Ad Explore, its first interactive format, in February 2012. It was developed to increase user engagement with clients’ brands and allow viewers to explore more about the advertiser's products or services from within an advert itself.

A partnership with interactive video company, Brainient, has now been brokered to bring a series of new formats.

These formats include: The Carousel, allowing users to view additional content such as video, gallery or links to websites in a strategically placed carousel; The Ribbon, allowing brands to advertise products through multiple synchronised experiences with products appearing in the overlay, which have been triggered by the video advertisement; The Button, allowing advertisers to have multiple calls-to-action on screen to a variety of products at the same time; The Extend, allowing audiences an extended version of an ad without interruption; The Select, giving viewers the choice of which creative to watch from a variety of options; and The Microsite providing extra content for consumers inside the video player.

“Ad Explore has proved to be a great success for ITV – since launch, we have seen average interaction rates of 4 per cent, with the most successful creatives above 15 per cent,” said Jon Block, controller of commercial digital products at ITV. “We are very excited to be able to offer an extended suite of interactive formats and believe the next generation of Ad Explore is an attractive, affordable and effective solution for brands.”

New suite of formats launches with a Thinkbox campaign (pictured) on 16 September.

The BBC has today announced the appointment of John Shield as director of communications for the corporation.

Shield is set to take up his new role in November, from his current position as director of communications at the Department for Work and Pensions.

Tony Hall, director general for the BBC, said: "John is a first class director of comms with a wide range of experience across broadcasting, government, and the commercial sector. He joins the BBC at an incredibly important time for the corporation as we strive to re-establish trust with our audiences and move towards a new chapter in the BBC’s history.”

Shield said that the position would be a 'demanding but fascinating challenge': "The BBC is one of the most talked about, hotly debated and important of our institutions - touching the lives of millions of people here and around the world every day. For these reasons, it is a demanding but fascinating challenge - I look forward to leading an excellent communications team in taking it on."

The BBC has also announced that Julian Payne will move to lead the BBC's recently announced review of Trust and Executive working practices, reporting into Hall.

With the deadline for this year's MiAwards, the UK's leading awards that recognise and reward independent marketing agency businesses, almost upon us Peter Czapp of The Wow Company, a sponsor of this years MiAwards, outlines the difference between the agencies that make it big and those that just tick along.

As accountants specialising in creative businesses, The Wow Company has worked with hundreds of creative agencies over the years, from start-up to £5m turnover. Here’s what Wow’s top performing creative agencies do better than anyone else and how you can emulate them in your agency:

Make your projects more profitable
It's one of the biggest challenges that agencies face: Delivering an amazing project, whilst still making a profit. We see so many agencies walking the tightrope between keeping the client happy and ensuring the job doesn't overrun as a result of additional client requests. The reality is that there is no simple answer to solving this challenge, but there are lots of little things that you can do to help you achieve more profitable projects. Here's some things that might help:

• Use technology – If you're using spreadsheets to manage projects, or have jobs scribbled on a whiteboard, it might be time to use some of the great technology that's available to help you run more profitable projects. Software such as Streamtime & WorkflowMax can make a massive difference to agency efficiency & therefore profitability.

• Scope it out – I know it's boring, but unless you properly scope out exactly what work you're going to do (and what you're not going to do) it'll only come back and bite you on the backside further down the line. A day spent scoping a project and getting it signed off by a client will save you two days further down the line, or will mean that you can bill for these two additional days, where previously you'd be working for free.

• Limit amends – As part of your scoping document, it's important to be clear about how many rounds of amends there will be. This avoids the situation where clients are constantly tweaking. If you state at the outset that the fee includes two rounds of amends, then when they request the third round, it's chargeable. Simple as that.

• Get sign-off – Get your clients to sign-off each stage of the project using e-signature tools such as Rightsignature or Echosign. By asking your client to sign that the stage is complete, it draws a clear line in the sand and avoids endless tweaks. You can also include a reminder in this document that any amendments will be chargeable after this point.

• Group changes together – If you have clients that send you change requests every 5 minutes, it's incredibly costly to make all these changes individually. You have to stop what you're doing, switch projects, make a small change and then switch back. A much better way to do it is to get your clients to send you amends all in one go. If they still send you things every 5 minutes, you'll need to have the internal discipline to group all these changes together - it'll save you tons of time.

• Have a minimum fee – If you don't charge clients for amends, they'll have you flitting between different shades of blue for an eternity. By having a minimum fee for any changes, e.g. £100, you'll force them to think about how important it really is to "make the full stop a bit bigger." When there's a price tag attached, there's a good chance they'll decide it wasn't that important after all. And if they do want to make the change, then at least you get paid for it.

• Be upfront – It's important to let clients know how you work right at the outset. If you lay down the ground rules in your initial project scoping document, you've got a chance of ensuring your projects are profitable. If you don't, you'll have no recourse with the client and you need to be prepared for your profit to slip away.

Have financial information at your fingertips
We haven’t met a creative agency yet that set up in business to spend more time reviewing accounts or staring at balance sheets, but unless you really understand the important numbers in your business you've got no chance of growing a profitable agency.

The good news is that you don’t need to be an accountant to get to grips with the numbers. Most successful agencies are run day-to-day on just a few critical pieces of information. In fact, research shows that many agencies are actually more successful as a result of focussing on just two to five Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) that really matter.

We've noticed that our top performing creative agencies have taken the time to setup dashboards for their businesses, which contain their KPIs, available at the click of a button. Having this key financial information at their fingertips allows them to make better business decisions and ultimately leads to more profit and faster growth.

What’s on your dashboard? What KPIs are driving your business forward?

Prioritise sales & marketing
We're accountants, so we're not going to start dispensing marketing advice (especially not to creative agencies). However, when we researched our top performing clients, we noticed that all the agencies that had reached £1m+ mentioned that a key turning point for them in their growth journey was when they decided to prioritise sales and marketing. We spotted a number of common traits amongst the top performing creative agencies. They all had the following:
• An individual responsible for sales and marketing (it didn't fall in between 2 directors).
• Time allocated to complete sales activity, e.g. every Tuesday & Thursday, or the first 2 hours of each day. If you try to fit it around project work, you'll fail every time. Sales & marketing requires ring-fenced time.
• Targets for generating opportunities (not just sales figures), e.g. number of meetings or pitches completed.
• Sales statistics, e.g. where the client heard about them, pitch value, conversion rate, final project value. This helped them work out how many pitches they needed in order to hit their billing targets - the stats don't lie.
• A plan – Not 'War & Peace', but a simple one page plan that showed them what they were going to do this month to generate clients.
• An engaged team – It wasn't just the directors' job to generate new business or additional fees from clients - the whole team were aware of the targets and were on the lookout for opportunities to help clients further (and bill for it).
• Speculative time – A small amount of time each month was set aside for speculative pitches to existing clients. Agencies would pick a client (one with potential to grow) and get their team to come up with new ideas to pitch to them - this helped expand accounts to other departments, geographies and even subsidiaries (at low cost).

Get out of the day-to-day
This is easier said than done, but unless you step away from the coal face, you've got no chance of building a £1m+ agency. We noticed that the top performing agencies we surveyed were masters at delegating and building teams around them that could do the work. The founders were brave when it came to recruiting (they did it early) and were constantly looking ahead to help plan what freelance resource they'd need.
If you feel that you've not got the right team around you to delegate to, then you need to do something about it… and fast. You're also going to have to get really good at letting go of the day-to-day tasks, to allow you to concentrate on the bigger picture.

Do you really want to grow your agency?
This isn't a trick question. There is nothing wrong with remaining small, especially if you can work with clients that you love working with, on projects you love working on. Being bigger does not necessarily mean bigger jobs, cooler clients, more money or working fewer hours. Before you embark on growth, think carefully about what YOU want to achieve from your business. Whether that’s fame & fortune, or just an easy life, it’s important to understand what you’re in this to achieve. Once you’ve worked that out, you can then build the agency that YOU want.

MiAwards is open to all agencies across the UK and the entry deadline for MiAwards 2013 is today, but extensions are available on request. For more information visit the MiAwards website or contact nikki.gillies@thedrum.com.

Virgin Media is the most socially engaged brand on Facebook according to a top five report from social media analytics platform Socialbakers.

The telecoms firm had a 94 per cent response rate and the average response time was just over three hours.

In second place, was mobile network provider EE who had a 90 per cent response rate but took a massive 1080 minutes to respond on average.

Next was Sky who had an 88 per cent response rate and an average response rate of 927 minutes.

This is followed by Thompson Holidays who had a 99 per cent response rate and took only over an hour in average to respond but overall had a lower volume of enquiries to deal with; as did fifth placed Argos who had a 97 per cent response rate who took just over two hours to respond on average.

The average overall response rate from brands was 67 per cent.

The most popular brand posts include Blossom Hill's "Not for kids. For Mums" wine ice lollies (pictured) which had 50k total interactions, 39,000 likes, 1189 comments, 10,000 shares and an engagement rate of 20.4 per cent.

Next, was Samsung with "Click LIKE for your chance to WIN a Samsung Fridge Freezer with mammoth storage space… TELL us the strangest thing you’ve found in your fridge? :-) #AOLetsGo", which received a total of 33,000 total interactions, 28,000 likes, 3415 comments, 2085 shares and an engagement rate of 2.84 per cent.

Finally Harrods shared a picture of Laduree tearoom with 29,000 total interactions, 25,000 likes, 591 comments, 3218 Shares and an engagement rate of 6.78 per cent.

The Daily Mail has publicly named Stoke City’s Steven Nzonzi as the mystery Premier League footballer alleged to have been involved in a hit and run incident with a cyclist.

Olympian Sir Chris Hoy had spearheaded a campaign via Tweeter to identify the driver of a vehicle alleged to have been involved in an altercation.

Reports of the incident were widely circulated via social media, together with photographs of the vehicle involved and the driver.

“The star was unavailable for comment on Thursday night but MailOnline can confirm he is the player involved,” Mail Online wrote this morning.

Greater Manchester Police are investigating the incident, but no arrests have been made or charges brought at this time.

Sir Chris Hoy retweeted cyclist Rob Lockhart’s original tweet urging the public to find the driver to his 529,901 followers.