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A good week for ...
A good week for West Ham, they might be struggling to make the top half of the Premier League, but among the massed ranks of their fans they now, officially, count the US President-elect and the most powerful man in the world:
Barack Obama. Other celebrity West Ham fans include former boxers Lennox Lewis and Frank Bruno, comedian John Cleese, former England cricket captain Graham Gooch, actor Leslie Grantham of the EastEnders and, of course, the great man Ray Winstone.
The North London strugglers Tottenham Hotspur have released a commemorative DVD of the eight-goal draw at the Emirates last week. Which rather begs the question: What would they have done if they'd won?
What they could have done if they had won against Arsenal is give Harry the keys to Tottenham. Down Pompey way they really know how to salute their favourites. In recognition of last season's FA Cup win, Portsmouth gave Redknapp the freedom of the city. Best of all, it means he is allowed to drive his sheep through the town square whenever he likes.
Brooks Mileson, former owner of Gretna Football Club, died this week aged 60. Mileson had bankrolled Gretna's rise from the bottom of the Scottish leagues to the top flight and a place in the Scottish Cup final. He'd withdrawn funding for the club last season amid continuing health problems. He suffered from chronic fatigue syndrome and a brain infection. A real character farewelled.
A bad week for ...
Punditry on the idiot box is a hard game, so spare a thought for the Trackside racing channel pundit who was asked live which horse would be a good one to pick for a last-place finish in the Melbourne Cup. After much considered thought, the response came: "Viewed". It really is a speculative business.
It seems Hamilton snr might be a tad thin-skinned. Lewis Hamilton's dad, Anthony, has spoken out about two things that pissed him off in the closing stages of the Formula One season.
1. The sickening racism of the Spanish fans. Fair enough.
2. The fact that a Brazilian Massa fan handed his son a toy black cat, symbol of bad luck in Brazil. Huh? What did he expect them to hand him? A bunch of flowers? A commemorative plaque?
David Nielsen has revealed why he got sacked from Norwegian club Stromsgodset back in 2005. He had warned "pretentious" Danish team-mate Allan Gaarde - who played briefly for Udinese - to stop "talking loudly about wine in Italian". "I told him: 'The next time you speak Italian I will break you in half. You're not fucking Italian - you spent eight months there.' So when he did it again I decided to break his shitting legs like sticks. I jumped at him and bang. Jackpot. Felt good."
More from the "When Olympians Turn Bad" file: Hot on the heels of Krisztian Tolgyesi, the former Hungarian Olympian and national judo champ who got caught making bombs for right-wing nutters, comes Peter Farkas, a gold medallist at Barcelona, now on the run after being sentenced to five years in prison for drug trafficking. Farkas, the 82kg Greco-Roman champ, and his brother both did a runner after being sentenced to seven years in prison for having several thousand marijuana plants. To paraphrase Dave Chappelle: They'll have to send the Rock to arrest him.