ZELLA COMPTON: When saying it with flowers kept mum

Zella was astonished at how badly it went for Moonpig on Mothers' Day - mums were sent half-dead bouquets

I’ve never used the online card and gift delivery company, but I did watch the catastrophic mess unfolding on Sunday morning, Mothers’ Day, on Moonpig’s Facebook page.

It began with incredulous disbelief, then with uncontrollable giggles as the situation developed and worsened, and then with a sense of sadness.

Of course, you can never tell with these things on the internet whether they’re true or not.

This week I read that Alexa – the home electronic help provided by Amazon – was laughing in houses uncontrollably. Very spooky.

I’ve not got one, or any of the similar models as I read that they listen to, and record, every conversation that they hear, and they’re always listening, thus recording.

Is that true? It’s so hard to tell.

As to the truth behind the Moonpig fiasco, again, who knows? Nut the comments section on the company’s Facebook page told a compelling story.

It all went horribly wrong for mothers. The first complaint I read, seeking redress, was for the fact that flowers hadn’t turned up. Yeah well, that happens.

The next one, that a helium balloon arrived half-deflated.

Then it really warmed up. Mothers receiving bespoke mugs with pictures of other peoples’ children on them, wrong cards popping up all over the country. Bouquets with dead flowers, half-dead flowers, or missing flowers.

Pictures of ‘what I ordered’ next to ‘what I received’ and it was very easy to spot the difference.

The one that really got me though was the lady who’d received a box of chocolates which was near-empty. All but three had been snaffled along the way.

And, yes, I do feel so sorry for all the people who were disappointed. The givers and the receivers. Those that saved their pocket money and spent it in good faith.

Those who were waiting for deliveries all day Saturday only to be let down at the last minute. But, the empty chocolates – that made me laugh out loud.

You have to wonder how companies fail so spectacularly like that, it’s not as if it is a new business venture, or that the company hasn’t had time to get itself sorted out?

It’s like KFC and the chicken problem all over. But the thing that made me laugh most of all? A phone call from my son at university late in the day, asking me if I’d received the flowers which he’d ordered...online.

Um, no.

YOU’VE BEEN TANGOED FOR MILLENIALS

Bud Light’s newest advert is set to annoy us for the summer. In it a king and queen receive gifts of alcohol from their subjects and greet each gift with the bottoms-up phrase of ‘dilly-dilly’.

It’s got all the hallmarks of the infamous ‘You know when you’ve been Tangoed’ which still resonates after all these (coming up to 30) years.

I well expect that dilly-dilly will sweep the land, probably in senior schools as, quite frankly, the advertising appears to have been made to appeal to the age group that quote.

And without Blackadder, or the Young Ones (which punctuated my teenage weekly viewing with wondrous beauty), what else do they have to repeat of a morning?

CARRAGHER’S ACTIONS WERE GRIM

Not what you expect to see on national news is footage of a person spitting, hoiking up some snot and letting rip, especially when it’s fired with speed and precision and so much of it – quite enough to make you vomit.

So pity the people whom it was aimed at who caught the incident on camera.

The repercussions for Jamie Carragher will surely be severe, and so they should be. There’s a lot of talk about his shame that he caught a 14-year-old girl with the contents, but you know what?

I don’t know who it would be okay to spit at like that? An 18-year-old girl? A 32-year-old woman?

And yes, he was baited, but still. Grim.