Nicki Minaj fans who queued to see her in Manchester only for her arrest to lead to the concert being cancelled at the last minute have blamed the beleaguered venue for the fiasco.

Ticketholders queued outside the Co-op Live arena from as early as 9am on Saturday and were allowed inside at 7pm.

Minaj, however, had been arrested at Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport on suspicion of possession of “soft drugs” and was not released until 9pm – when the gig was due to start.

Once inside, her fans, also known as Barbz, claim security staff told them she was already in the building. But at 9.40pm promoter Live Nation announced the event was being cancelled.

Alvin Christie, 29, from Liverpool, was among those who had camped out since Saturday morning.

He said: “I would say it was very poorly managed. When we arrived… they were actively telling fans that she had arrived and that everyone was going to dance tonight.

“For a lot of people that were asking those questions, that’s obviously [keeping] people’s hopes up. I understand that maybe they wanted to get people into the arena for health and safety risks to stop people being outside.

“But I think most importantly, they maybe could have advised people as soon as they’ve known that the show was postponed and we should be turned away when we’re outside the arena, rather than holding loads of people in the arena.”

Mr Christie said he does not blame Minaj, and says fans wanted her to be “in a good place” for the show.

“Die-hard Nicki fan” Charu, who also travelled from Liverpool for the concert, said the evening was “so ridiculously disappointing”.

“My sister and I had been looking forward to this for months. I’m in the middle of taking my medical school exams and I had been working around this day and was so looking forward to it,” they said.

“People around us said they’d travelled from Ireland and Scotland, paid for hotels for the night in Manchester, which is not cheap.

“So the fact that tickets will be refunded or still valid for another concert doesn’t really put into perspective the time and money that we have all spent on this night.”

No toilets for those queuing for hours

Fan Eileen Allardyce also claimed there were “no toilets” while she queued outside from around 4pm.

“I’m very disappointed, more so [with] the venue because, obviously, everyone was unravelling on social media, everyone knew what the situation was and the venue completely let us down,” she said.

Dutch Police told Sky News Minaj was detained and eventually fined for “illegally exporting soft drugs from the Netherlands to another country”.

The rapper claimed she arrived at her hotel in Manchester early on Sunday after spending “5-6 hours” in a cell in Amsterdam.

She then invited fans to her hotel, where according to videos on social media, she spoke to the crowds outside.

“I wanted to honestly tell you that I love you,” she said.

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On X, the 41-year-old said the venue was “willing to go past 11pm”, but unidentified members of staff had “succeeded at their plan to not let me get on that stage tonight”.

A new date should be announced on Sunday, she added.

“One July option & one June option is currently being discussed. I’ll find a way to not only make up the date with the performance but I’m going to create an added bonus for everyone that had a [ticket] for this show. Promise,” she wrote.

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The new £365m Co-op Live arena has been plagued with problems even before it opened on 14 May.

The 23,500-capacity venue was originally due to open with two Peter Kay stand-up shows on 23 and 24 April, but that was pushed back when problems emerged at a test event headlined by Rick Astley.

The arena then planned for US rapper A Boogie Wit Da Hoodie to open the arena on 1 May, but that was called off an hour before his performance, when the ventilation system fell from the ceiling.

The ventilation issue meant scheduled performances by US pop star Olivia Rodrigo and British band Keane were also postponed, while a series of shows by Take That were moved to the AO Arena elsewhere in Manchester.

An album of “incredibly personal” new songs from Sir Elton John won’t be the singer’s last, according to his long-term songwriting partner Bernie Taupin. 

“It’s a pretty amazing project, very cool…it tells a lot of stories and it’s incredibly personal, but it’s certainly not final.”

Few details are known about what fans can expect from Sir Elton‘s new music, but the legendary lyricist says he thinks it will be released before Christmas.

“It’s all done, it’s all in the can and ready to come out, I think, at the end of this year,” Taupin told Sky News.

While Sir Elton, 77, announced his retirement from touring last year, bowing out with a performance on the Pyramid stage at Glastonbury, Taupin says they have no plans to stop making music together.

“You always think ‘is the next album going to be the last?’ but, I think, both Elton and I, we just have this creative drive and we have this ultimate total love for music on every different level.”

Taupin, who’s lived in California since the 70s, has been back in England after being invited to speak at The Other Songs Live, an evening celebrating songwriters old and new.

“Anything that nurtures talent, you know, gets my ear,” Taupin insists.

He remains one of the most successful lyricists in the world, having collaborated for more than half a century with Sir Elton, selling more than 300 million records globally, and together writing more than 30 albums.

And while Taupin’s lyrics are firmly embedded in modern pop culture, he says he struggles to explain what his secret is.

“It’s very difficult for me because, in a nutshell, my answer is I don’t know, I just do it.”

But one thing he’s certain of is that it’s a skill a computer just can’t replicate.

“I loathe and detest the whole idea of AI… from a creative musical standpoint, it cannot write songs as well as the human heart can because it’s got no heart.

“I’ve seen the product of AI, you know, when they’ve said write a song in the style of so-and-so and it’s complete shit.”

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For Taupin, one-half of one of the world’s most successful songwriting partnerships, he’s not ready to be written off by technology.

Director George Miller says the Mad Max film franchise that exists today was borne out of limitations.

Originally an emergency room doctor, the Australian director transitioned into film and created the story of a world where limitation is a central theme and abundance a dream.

The Australian director made his first Mad Max film in 1978 with a crew of 35 and a fresh-faced Mel Gibson as the lead.

He says it was filmed on a discarded camera lens from a Steve McQueen film, and the lack of resources to create the project ended up working in his favour.

He tells Sky News: “The first Mad Max was definitely borne out of limitations. It ultimately turned out to be very key to it.”

The 79-year-old says the original story was written as a “contemporary story set in the city of Melbourne,” but financial limitations spawned the idea of it being set in a “dystopian future”.

“We couldn’t afford to have car chases in the middle of the street,” he says. “We couldn’t afford [to have] the extra cars or put stuntmen in those cars. We couldn’t have extras in the street, trams or busses and we couldn’t use the buildings so we decided to set it a few years in the future.”

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Miller says they decided to instead focus on what they could use and thus the Mad Max franchise we know today was created.

“We could shoot in backstreets, where there were no extras and no cars, or shoot in really old, decrepit buildings where the people wouldn’t ask you for rent. And that led to the film becoming more allegorical.

“Had we not done that? I don’t think we’d be still doing it.”

Burnt land and no speed limits

Miller is a cinephile at heart and for Mad Max, he had a vision – for it to be shot on a “big anamorphic widescreen”.

He previously credited his childhood in rural Queensland and the over-powering car culture there as the influences for Mad Max.

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At the time, the area consisted of completely flat roads, burnt land and no speed limits – the results of which Miller witnessed as an emergency room doctor at the age of 26.

“We couldn’t afford the cameras, or the lenses, but there was a set of lenses in Australia at the time, in one particular place that had been dumped out of Hollywood from the movie that Sam Peckinpah shot called The Getaway with Steve McQueen and Ali MacGraw”.

All but one of these lenses was “wrecked”.

He says: “The rental house virtually gave it to us for nothing. There was one lens called the 35mm lens, and we used that and it allowed us to get much more dynamics in the shot”.

Why are moments in the Mad Max franchise sped up?

Inspired by the silent film era, Miller’s aim was to create “pure cinema” and make “‘a silent film with sound”.

To achieve the aesthetic he craved, he played around with frame rates.

In film, video is essentially a number of images (frames) captured sequentially to make the image move. Movies display 24 frames per second.

Miller says his plan was to shoot everything at high speed but, because of financial restraints, could not use speed ramps as it would cost the equivalent of a day of filming.

When he started to edit Mad Max he noticed “something was too slow” and to achieve the look he desired, began removing frames from the sequence.

“It looks a little bit like the old silent movies and sped up. By the time I got to Mad Max two, we would shoot at 20 frames or 18 frames. And so, I started to do a lot of that.”

Reflecting on Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, he says: “Nowadays digitally I shoot most things at 48 frames because you can ramp it up and down from 48 frames, provided you’ve got the resolution, you can do so much more with that.”

The film Mad Max was released in 1979 and put Mel Gibson on the road to stardom.

Oddly, at that time the film distributor in the US, American International Pictures, opted to dub the strong Australian accents used by the actors for fears that they would not be understood by American audiences.

A far cry from misunderstanding the Australian accent, the country’s actors have become some of the most well-known faces in Hollywood nowadays.

Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga

Miller’s latest release, Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga serves as a prequel to Mad Max: Fury Road.

It was written before the Tom Hardy film began in production in order to “fully understand” the characters on screen.

It stars Anya Taylor-Joy as Imperator Furiosa and Chris Hemsworth as Dementus.

Miller says it feels good for the prequel to finally be in cinemas.

“We had a magnificent cast and crew who gave their very best. We tried to get the best story we could have on the screen using all the tools we have and hopefully it means something significant to people.”

Miller on the future of film

The Australian director decided against using de-ageing technology for the role of Furiosa and instead cast Anya Taylor-Joy to play the character first depicted by Charlize Theron.

It is not that he is against using AI technology in fact, Taylor-Joy recently revealed they used software to mix her face with that of the child actor, Alyla Browne, for her scenes.

Miller says the beauty of cinema is that it constantly changes.

“From the very beginning of cinema, which is 130 years old, there’s always change. The silent era and sound. Then there was Technicolor, then there was the digital dispensation in the early 90s. Once that’s come along, things have changed so rapidly even since then.”

Always attracted to the tech behind the scenes, Miller cites the digital ability to make Sheep-Pig talk in Babe or Mumble tap dance in Happy Feet as game-changing moments for him.

“By the time we got to do Fury Road, I realiSed, ‘Oh my God, we could do things that we never dreamed of doing back in the celluloid days’.

“Technology will keep changing and advancing… I don’t think we should limit ourselves if the tools are available. It’s always been the case, and cinema has to adjust.”

Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga is in cinemas now