Manchester’s beleaguered Co-op Live arena has finally officially opened its doors after weeks of setbacks, cancellations and postponements.

The venue was initially due to fully open with two Peter Kay stand-up shows on 23 and 24 April, but these dates were pushed back when problems emerged at a test event headlined by Ricky Astley.

The Co-op Live’s new opening night was then due to be 1 May when US act A Boogie Wit Da Hoodie should have performed – but this was cancelled at the last minute as fans queued outside.

In the fortnight since, numerous other acts have been forced to postpone or move their Co-op Live gigs but the doors have finally opened to fans, with Manchester band Elbow taking to the stage this evening.

The show reportedly got under way a little late, with London band The WAEVE as the support act, the first to take to the stage as the massive arena began to fill with people.

Elbow took to the stage shortly after 9pm, with singer Guy Garvey shouting “let’s open this venue properly”, according to What’s On Editor for the Manchester Evening News Jenna Campbell, writing on X.

A Boogie Wit Da Hoodie’s last-minute cancellation two weeks ago came after part of the venue’s ventilation and air conditioning system fell from the ceiling during a soundcheck.

The venue’s boss said today that the accident could have been “catastrophic” if it had happened just 15 minutes later.

Read more: All the Co-op Live gigs cancelled or postponed

Signs Co-op Live is still a work in progress

Shingi Mararike

North of England correspondent

@ShingiMararike

The fact that the opening of Co-op Live has been beset by issues was not lost on Dermot and Diane as they stared up at the sleek black structure with a capacity of 23,500.

The couple, who had travelled from Lancaster, said they already had a Plan B to go to the Trafford Centre in Manchester for a meal if the concert failed to go ahead. As an Elbow fan, Diane saw the concert as an early treat for her 60th birthday.

Another group who travelled from Norwich for five hours also had their own backup plan if things didn’t go as they had intended.

Less than a month ago, the arena still looked like a building site, with workers in hard hats surrounding it.

This evening, there was not a crane in sight as the queue began to build. As scheduled, the gates opened at 6.30pm and hundreds of people slowly streamed in through the security gates, scanning their own tickets on the way into an atrium that had a huge LED screen taking up most of one wall, flashing with the names of the headliners.

Some people walking into the arena audibly gasped at its sheer size. From the self-scanning tills to the lights lining the escalators, the venue is as modern and sleek as advertised, but there were also signs that Co-op Live is still a work in progress.

Some security and hospitality staff seemed to be playing catch-up with the technology, while police officers in the venue were deep in conversation with both staff and Manchester City Council. Meanwhile, a woman hovered around the atrium with a notepad to check all the screens were working.

For this multi-million-pound venue and its financial backers, the first crowds through the doors and first notes finally being played must have come with a huge sigh of relief.

Tim Leiweke, chief executive of the arena’s operator Oak View Group, told BBC News: “They didn’t put the bolts in. It wasn’t visible to the eye and it fell out.

“So we [have since] got that double checked and triple checked. We’ve looked at thousands of bolts up in that ceiling now. We’ve looked at the life safety lines. And we were going to take our time to make sure we did this right.

“There was no way we were opening the doors until we checked every screw and every bolt and every one of those 95 shafts.”

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A number of Elbow fans at the venue admitted they were feeling “apprehensive” ahead of the gig.

“When you go anywhere you want to know about the structural integrity of the place you’re going to,” said Samantha, 51, who did not want to share her surname.

“I know all venues have to start somewhere but as long as they say everything is fine, that’s as reassuring as it can be.”

With a capacity of 23,500, Co-op Live is the UK’s latest indoor arena and it cost £365m to build.

The UK will spend £140m next year helping starving people in Yemen who are suffering one of the most “acute humanitarian crises in the world”, the deputy foreign secretary has said.

Speaking exclusively to Sky News, Andrew Mitchell raised the plight of the Yemeni people, whom he said were living “on the margins of subsistence” following nearly a decade of civil war.

Mr Mitchell promised that the UK’s bilateral support for Yemen would increase by 60% and that any money provided would be designed “directly to help people who are in a very perilous humanitarian position”.

“It is Britain doing good, going to the rescue of the most desperate people in the world and helping them,” he said.

The deputy foreign secretary’s intervention comes following months of reporting from Yemen from Sky News’ special correspondent Alex Crawford, who has detailed how the war in Gaza has had an adverse impact on the Yemeni people.

Yemen’s Houthi militants, backed by Iran, have targeted ships in the Red Sea region which they claim are linked to Israel or helping its war effort.

The repeated missile and drone attacks by the Houthis since November have forced international cargo ships to be re-routed and take longer, more costly journeys around the Cape of Good Hope that has pushed up the price of goods in Yemen – already one of the poorest countries in the world.

However, the Houthis’ actions, while condemned by the West, have prompted demonstrations of support in the streets of Yemen, where solidarity is expressed with Palestinians in Gaza.

Mr Mitchell said 70% of the food that gets into Yemen goes through ports used by international shipping and was therefore being put at risk by the Houthis’ actions.

“It is often impeded in getting there by what the Houthis are doing in disrupting the flow of international shipping,” he explained.

“So that is very bad – and, an example of the terrible effect of the Houthis are having on their own people as well as on the wider international community.”

Read more:
Babies are starving as Yemen teeters on brink of collapse
Alex Crawford: Inside Yemen – the forgotten war

Asked what the international community was doing to bring about peace in Yemen, Mr Mitchell replied: “Well, Britain holds the pen, in the jargon of the trade, at the United Nations. So we lead on Yemen.

“And, recently we’ve been trying to make sure that the negotiations, which the UN special representative has been involved in, are successful.

“There’s a very different situation now from what there was a couple of years ago with the Saudis. And there is a peace process that is there for the taking.

“We urge all the different parties who are involved in Yemen to get involved in that peace process, to bring an end to a terrible situation, which, above all, millions of ordinary people in Yemen are suffering from.”

Michael Cohen said he had been “knee deep into the cult of Donald Trump” as he testified for a second day in the ex-president’s trial.

As Trump‘s defence tried to paint the former lawyer and ‘fixer’ as a bitter and fame-hungry former acolyte, he denied being obsessed by his former boss but said he had once “admired him tremendously”.

He is testifying in the case about hush money payments to ex-porn star Stormy Daniels in an attempt to cover up an alleged sexual encounter in 2006.

Trump trial – Day 17 as it happened

Such payouts aren’t illegal, but Trump is accused of falsifying business records to hide it – a claim he denies.

He told the court on Tuesday that loyalty was the reason he kept lying about the payment when it came out in the media.

In 2016 he described Trump as kind, humble, honest and genuine.

The defence asked whether he had believed what he was saying.

“At the time, I was knee-deep into the cult of Donald Trump,” he responded, adding: “I was not lying, no, that’s how I felt.”

Mr Cohen admitted he “missed Trump” at times after he became president.

They have also pointed to hundreds of media appearances, podcasts and interviews in which the disgraced lawyer has mentioned him.

His credibility was under attack as Mr Cohen has previously admitted lying under oath.

The 57-year-old was jailed after pleading guilty in 2018 to charges relating to the hush money payment and other unrelated offences.

He said that after a FBI raid on his home the same year, Trump had messaged him: “I am the president of the United States, everything is going to be okay, stay tough”.

Read more:
Porn stars, sex scandals and zzzs: A to Z of Trump trial

Donald Trump denies the liaison with Stormy Daniels and says Mr Cohen acted on his own initiative when he made the payment.

The former lawyer denied that claim in earlier evidence, saying “everything required Trump’s sign-off”.

‘I violated my moral compass’

Mr Cohen – who once said he would take a bullet for his boss – admitted at the end of questioning on Tuesday that he “violated my moral compass” while working for Donald Trump.

“I regret doing things for him that I should not have,” he told the New York court. “Lying, bullying people in order to effectuate the goal.

“I don’t regret working for the Trump Organisation – as I expressed before, [those were] some very interesting, great times,” he added.

“But to keep the loyalty and to do things that he had asked me to do, I violated my moral compass, and I suffered the penalty, as did my family. That is my failure.”

On Monday, the court heard him testify about setting up a shell company to make the $130,000 hush money out of his own money.

Prosecutors say Trump later paid the money back and covered it up by recording it as a legal retainer fee.

He faces 34 counts of falsifying business records over the claims.

Trump – who will take on Joe Biden in his bid to become president again in November – is unlikely to face a custodial sentence if found guilty.

His other cases are potentially more damaging but mired in delays.

They concern allegations of keeping stacks of secret documents after leaving office and trying to overturn his 2020 election defeat. He denies the claims.