Reminds me of the Virgin incident at MAN
And it brings to mind another MAN incident I witnessed in December 2013:
A Cathay Pacific Cargo 747 was making its first visit to MAN so somebody decided it would be nice to have a couple of fire engines out for a water salute. The fire engines were positioned well ahead of the scheduled arrival, the weather was horrible (barely above freezing) and the inbound flight was delayed by an hour or two. Eventually, the flight arrived and, while taxying to the terminal, the flight was asked if they wanted this water salute. The very polite answer was "No thank you".
As the fire engines were positioned and ready to go, they offered the same to a Thomson 757. (I can't remember if this aircraft had just returned to the fleet after one of its many leases, whether it was the first day of a new service or what). Whatever, when offered the water salute, the Captain responded with "It is about 3C out there, there is a cold wind blowing and I have just been de-iced. What makes you think I would want 5,000 gallons of cold water sprayed all over my aircraft? No thank you. I don't want a water salute!"
Even the fire engines managed to look dejected as they began their trip back across the airport to their station, still full of the water they had brought out 2 or 3 hours before!