Compiled by LAURA SLATTERY

Image of the week: The trials of Tesco

HOW DO you illustrate the news that Tesco is investing £1 billion overhauling its business this year after UK profits suffered its first decline in 20 years?

An empty shopping trolley, stranded in a sad puddle on the periphery of a forlorn Tesco car park in Loughborough, central England, should do the trick.

Stores in the retail giant’s domestic market are to be given “a warmer look and feel” as the retailer seeks to counteract a subdued period that has seen its shares take the title of worst performer on the FTSE 100 blue-chip index this year. Photograph: Darren Staples/Reuters

In numbers

Irish ports and princesses

4,000

– The number of passengers on board the Grand Princess, which sailed into Dublin on Wednesday, kicking off the cruise season.

90

– The number of cruise ships that will visit the capital this year, according to the Dublin Port Company.

€50 million

- The estimated annual contribution by cruise ship tourism to the Dublin economy.

Getting to know... Kieran Behan

KIERAN BEHAN is only the second Irish gymnast to qualify for an Olympic Games, a feat he achieved in January. But, as of Wednesday, he is also a BT ambassador – that is to say he is being sponsored by telco BT Ireland.

It’s not hard to see why BT might have liked Behan’s story as, after having suffered a series of serious injuries, he was twice told he would never walk again.

“To find out I’m going to the Olympic Games is something that dreams are made of,” says London-born Behan. So that’s overcoming adversity, personal resilience, achieving your dream – all delightful brand “touchpoints” for BT.

With the countdown to the London 2012 Games now standing at 98 days, expect the BT-Behan union to be the first of several such sponsorships by brands of Irish athletes, who otherwise have difficulty securing funding.

The lexicon

Omnishambles

“OMNISHAMBLES” was the term used in the House of Commons this week by Labour leader Ed Miliband to describe the UK budget.

It wasn’t Miliband who coined it though – that honour goes to the writers of the BBC’s The Thick of It, once billed as satire but which, with hindsight, increasingly resembles a documentary.

“Omnishambles” is deployed by the show’s notoriously scary spin doctor, Malcolm Tucker, to label a policy manoeuvre where everything that can go wrong, does go wrong, usually with undue haste.

Chris Bryant MP joined in the fun on Newsnight by using “clustershambles”, a contraction of omnishambles and another Tuckerism too rude to mention here.