Outside Edge

Good: the Lancashire and Cheshire Amateur League hold a meeting to promote the FA's Respect campaign. Bad: a drunken heckler disrupts the proceedings. Even worse: he is one of their own referees. Turns out Osman "Ossie" Tosum has a bit of previous: in a pre-season friendly he forgot to bring his red and yellow cards, so sent off an abusive player by brandishing an orange B&Q receipt; and he forgot his watch for a later game, which descended into chaos when the mobile phone he was using as a timepiece slipped out of his pocket. Oh, and he failed to turn up at all for a subsequent match. The league have suspended Mr Tosum, so it's more Homebase than B&Q for him in future.

18

The age of Daniel Whatsize, a goalkeeper released by Chesterfield as they downsize their squad. Rumours that QPR plan to team him up with their defender "One Size" Fitz Hall are just silly, so we won't mention them.

Sample charge of the week

Artificial penises have a part to play in life's rich pageant, we know, but one model has just been declared illegal in America. The Whizzinator, a prosthetic pecker available in a variety of skin tones, came complete with a heater and Yellow River synthetic urine, and was designed to enable drug cheats to supply steamy-clean samples. Its record is spotty, though: the American footballer Onterrio Smith was caught using one three years ago, and now the device's inventors and marketers, Robert Catalano and Gerald Wills, have pleaded guilty to conspiracy to defraud. After going with the flow – over 140,000 units sold – they face up to eight years in jail. Must be something in the water.

Good week for

Phil Taylor, powered to a second successive Grand Slam of Darts title... Jose Mourinho, won the battle of the former Chelsea managers as Inter beat Claudio Ranieri's Juventus... Fernando Verdasco, won the deciding rubber for Spain against Argentina in the Davis Cup final... and Tom Cave, 17, passed his driving test in time to compete in the Wales Rally GB.

Bad week for

Chemmy Alcott, Britain's top female skier, broke her ankle in training... Tiger Woods, the world's No 1 golfer, lost a £6.6m sponsorship deal with General Motors... Bradley Saunders, English Olympic boxer, questioned by police after £12,000 of cocaine was allegedly found in his garden... and Jimmy Connors, former tennis ace, arrested in California after an alter-cation in a queue for a basketball game.

Animal behaviour of the week

Mention of mascot misfortunes last week prompted one of our several readers to direct us to tinyurl.com/579b2x and their Ten Greatest Mascot Fights Of All Time videos. The animal world's natural order goes out of the window as Bristol City's Three Little Piggies give Wolfie of Wolves a pasting and the Houston Cougar gets hammered by the Oregon Duck, but the real crowd-pleaser kicks off at an American football game. A chicken and an eagle start a scrap; then a frog and a Trojan warrior wade in, and finally a 6ft dog arrives, paws swinging. Men in strange uniforms hitting each other is what the gridiron game's all about, of course, but it doesn't usually happen in the stands.

s.redfern@independent.co.uk