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Chance smiled on the arch-opportunist at golf's British Open. Manion managed to bluff his way into the players' enclosure at Royal Lytham & St Anne's, where he spotted Tiger Woods being interviewed for American television.

Without warning, the heavens opened: one of the world's most famous (and richest) sportsmen was being soaked.

As officials frantically searched for an umbrella, Manion – cool as you like – sidled up to the world number one and offered his brolly.

So it was that sports fans around the world were able to watch their idol as he sheltered under an umbrella emblazoned with the immortal words: "Irwell Valley gold service".

Happy New Year
Spare a thought for the employees of councils planning to apply for a place on the next round of arm's-length management organisations. It appears they will spend at least part of the festive season doing paperwork. With its characteristically impeccable sense of timing, the ODPM has set the deadline for submission of round-four bids on New Year's Eve. Doubtless, applications will be looked at first thing on 2 January.

Seems to be the hardest word
After years on the front bench, home secretary David Blunkett must be used to moaners and ingrates. He doesn't expect anything less – even when it comes to the 15,000 asylum-seeking families he so generously granted leave to remain.

Apparently, Blunkett has been heard to complain that it's always the people who benefit from these deals that are never grateful – like the Sangatte refugees. A simple "thanks" wouldn't hurt, would it?

Goose chased
Many housing folk have been on the receiving end of antisocial behaviour. But John Perry, the former policy director of the Chartered Institute of Housing who now works on a housing project in Nicaragua, gets disturbances of a more unusual kind. A recent phone conversation was interrupted by a flurry of quacking and flapping. "Sorry," he said, "I got a bit close to the geese."

Someone to watch over me
John McHale is being watched. The chief executive of Knowsley Housing Trust and former Chartered Institute of Housing president is getting constant attention from www.kirkbytimes.co.uk, a self-styled "working class" website out to destroy the Thatcherite ideals that the (left-leaning) McHale is meant to embody. From youthful workers denied tea-breaks to letters sent to the wrong address, he is the root of all evil, apparently.