The furore over the cost and future of the Millennium dome is a big headache for East Lancashire MP Janet Anderson.

Bill Jacobs takes a personal look at the challenges facing her as she deals with attacks on the controversial construction.

ROSSENDALE and Darwen MP Janet Anderson must be wishing that the Millennium Dome would just disappear before parliament re-assembles at the end of next month.

For she will have the unpleasant duty of answering questions in the Commons about the latest fiasco.

The Minister responsible for the troubled attraction, Lord 'Charlie' Falconer, sits in the more civilised Upper House.

So it is Rossendale and Darwen MP Mrs Anderson will have to field the calls for his resignation and demands for an explanation to what went wrong.

Her job as Commons Spokesman on the Dome will take up much of her time and probably increase her blood pressure.

Even loyalists such as Bolton North East David Crausby have grave doubts about the Dome.

He said: "I wouldn't have built it in the first place. It's in the wrong place.

"We certainly shouldn't give it any further money. They keep saying it's the last cash they'll need. I would be tempted to have let it close this week."

The extra £47 million from the National Lottery was aimed at ensuring that the sale to a consortium lead by a Japanese finance house Nomura went through without problem.

But with the firm now getting cold feet, Mrs Anderson may have even more embarrassing revelations to deal with.

The Dome appears to have been a project dogged by bad luck from the outset.

As the brainchild of Tory Deputy Prime Minister Michael Heseltine it instantly put the Daily Mail's back up. Being endorsed by Tony Blair and his chief henchman Peter Mandelson ensured that the newspaper -- aimed firmly at the middle-class mothers and families that were the target group for Dome visitors -- ran a campaign of astonishing and sustained vitriol against the scheme.

The problems raising sponsorship gave it a bad start and the chaos of the first night for VIP guests ensured that many other media figures became equally hostile. Most people who visit the Dome seem to have been delighted with what they found.

But the suggestion that it's all Tony Blair's "Cool Britannia modernistic trash" has put many others off.

Once it had got a bad name, nothing could go right.

It began to be seen as a bottomless pit for lottery cash depriving worthwhile schemes elsewhere in the country of much needed money.

Once the losses started they escalated and simple bad luck played its part.

Whenever people decided to go, the Dome became congested, putting people off visiting leaving it apparently empty.

And the Easter holiday, which was targeted for visitors from the North of England, fell foul of the traditional British weather, it was so appalling that anyone thinking of heading to Greenwich to see the Dome would have opened their curtains, grunted, and gone straight back to bed.

Lord Falconer has claimed that there was a lack of proper financial control and planning over the attractions in the Dome at the beginning.

Many Ministers believe this to be true, and the fault was the powerful cross party coalition in favour of it.

One senior figure said: "This meant nobody properly scrutinised it. The target figure for visitors at £12 million was unrealistically high. Nobody properly checked this forecast or the financial plans.

"Because Michael and Peter were in favour of it, not to mention Tony, it all went through on the nod. It should have been subject to rigorous checking and discipline.

"If things had been properly planned, the target of visitors had been £6 million instead of £12 million and the financial figures adjusted accordingly it would all have been a different story.

"We wouldn't have had the bad publicity and then if he had got 7 million people in it would have been a triumph not a disaster."

Whatever the true story that lead to the fiasco of the Millennium Dome, there will be little comfort for Mrs Anderson when she stands up in the House of Commons to answer questions on the issuer later this year.

Even now she will know that she is going to be in for a pretty torrid time and that while the problems are nothing to do with her there is a risk that some of the mud thrown at Westminster in her direction might stick.