Confirmation from the Tribe Hotline: Tribers have taken the Queen of Pop by surprise with an enthusiastic rendition of Happy Birthday in Manchester tonight!

The plan to sing birthday wishes to Madonna as a celebration of her 46th birthday tomorrow began as an idea of AussieG in one of the MadonnaTribe forum threads a few weeks ago. Since then Tribers have worked hard on a secret plan on how to get an arena of thousands to sing to Madonna on Sunday night.

This logistical nightmare involved informing the management of MEN Arena as well as Caresse Henry of the secret plan. Last night a letter was passed to the Musical Director and Stuart Price to involve them too. All expressed their interest and indicated that it was a great idea, but the planning and execution was left to the fans themselves.

So Tribers got busy – banners spelling out Happy Birthday were made. Thousands of flyers were printed and handed out by Tribers on the door as people took to their seats and then once again in the sections. The flyers asked the audience to sing Happy Birthday 3 times in between ‘Papa don’t Preach’ and ‘Crazy for You’. Word soon spread and the stage was set. But would it work?

Hell did it work! As Madonna started speaking Siedah Garrett interupted and as one the crowd came together and sang Happy Birthday, the band and the dancers joined in, and the Queen of Pop was overtaken by emotion before thanking them and dedicating ‘Crazy for You’ to them. And during ‘Don’t tell me to Stop’ Madonna said ‘I won’t stop because it is my birthday tomorrow’!
A big hooray to all those Tribers who worked hard to pull this off, including AussieG, Wannabe, Gogobilly, Tonybecks, Impressive_Manchester, Jamesy and of course The Immaculate and The One.