Long before he rose to eminence as the world's leading golfer, Vijay Singh - wearer of a US Masters green jacket and winner of two US PGA Championships - spent time working as a bouncer on the door of a nightclub on Edinburgh's Lothian Road. For anyone who has lived in the Scottish capital, having one's wits about you is certainly a prerequisite to a palatable evening.

Back in the 1980s when Maggie Thatcher's Conservative Government was wreaking havoc in various outposts of Scotland, one imagines this would be especially so. Lothian Road on a weekend night is certainly an alternative view of

When Neil Robertson is beginning the defence of his Masters title against Ding Junhui at London's Alexandra Palace on Sunday afternoon, Ronnie O'Sullivan may well be downing tools for the day.

O'Sullivan's choice of weapon this week is likelier to be a pitchfork than a snooker cue after news emerged that he was finding solace away from the stresses of professional sport by engaging in voluntary work as a farm labourer.

O'Sullivan will miss the Masters, an event carrying a new sponsor in Betfair and an increased first prize of £175,000, for the first time in two decades after announcing in

Darts fans at London's Alexandra Palace

As the embers of 2012 begin to fizzle out, it is always a poignant time to dust down one's preferred sound bites from the year that was.

My personal favourite is reserved for the ongoing chairman of the Premier League Sir Dave Richards, an intrepid football explorer of Scott-like proportions, who gloriously decided to promote the need for a few pints of confidence when he washed up in liquor-shy Qatar back in March.

The diminutive but oil rich host nation of the 2022 World Cup finals is a spot where alcohol, in public at least, is about as welcome as your average Chelsea fan in Leeds.

There have been a few happenings in and around the haggard world of professional football over the past few days that that do not appear to have any obvious conclusion, but it remains worth asking: Why did the West Bromwich Albion player Liam Ridgewell snap himself wiping his backside with £20 notes when he clearly had toilet roll to call upon?

Why would any frazzled hack pen a weird newspaper column to randomly question the sexuality of a professional footballer and include xenophobic references for no apparent reason other than to appear utterly bonkers?

And what right did a young Celtic

Not in the frame: Carl Froch has been bizarrely snubbed in the SPOTY nominations

Walking past a fairly gnarled pub in London's East End last Saturday evening, the sort of creaking watering hole that was probably in its prime when the Marquess of Queensberry was contemplating his rules, there barely seemed room to swing a punch never mind encourage a few as the image of the doomed Ricky Hatton gushed from several protruding television sets ahead of his bout with the Ukrainian Vyacheslav Senchenko.

The place was lit up like a Christmas Tree with characters who looked they had gone a few rounds before Hatton finally appeared.

Hatton is from Manchester yet this was in the

If David Beckham is considering returning to England for the final furlong of a career that has exceeded his own expectations, no matter how ridiculous they were during his formative years in Manchester United's youth system, he would be advised to leave the missus at home on match days.

It would not take much for the great thinkers of our time to dust down the old songbooks about Posh's apparent preferences, a litany of air-polluting tunes that reached a crescendo at the same time Beckham was England captain and rejoicing in his trademark wide berth representing Manchester United in the

Put a beggar on horseback and he'll ride to hell. It continues to fascinate this onlooker how folk continue to turn a little bit eccentric when a television camera is trained on them. It is difficult to imagine Philip Schofield used to share roomspace with a puppet called Gordon the Gopher on Children's TV on the BBC three decades ago. Little did we know then that he would unwittingly become a self-appointed celebrity nonce-hunter on television for grown-ups.

Zlatan Ibrahimovic's fourth goal against England made for good theatre on live TV this week, but Schofield's decision to brandish a

There are few moments in life when you truly revel in your roots. A couple of weeks ago, I dragged myself along to Shepherd's Bush Empire to watch The Proclaimers play London for the first time in several years. This was no time to haver as a diminutive Scottish geezer ran up to a microphone before relaying the news to an exuberant crowd in a distinctive Lothian patois: "Ladies and gentlemen...the boys are back in town.."

Craig and Charlie Reid, or The Proclaimers as the twin brothers are better known, had the joint bouncing with a riveting new song Whatever You've Got before trotting out