Tripp Isenhour, whose name is probably worth a Diary item in itself, is a mediocre golfer, but has lately received widespread media attention for a birdie shot. Unfortunately, the birdie was a protected species and the shot killed it.

Isenhour was filming an instructional video when, allegedly angered by having to retake segments because of a hawk's chirps, he took it out with a shot either carefully aimed or a "one-in-a-million" fluke, depending on who you believe. He could face 14 months in jail.

"There were several others trying to get the bird to simply fly away," Isenhour said. "The bird was high up in the tree and I was simply just trying to hit the tree to make the bird fly away."

But prosecutors say he drove to the hawk in a golf cart and took several shots at it before finally hitting the target. "He was just going strangely out of the way to go after it," said Jethro Senger (!), a sound engineer at the shoot. "I yelled at him. I said, What did you expect was going to happen?' I said, You're a pro golfer, you're hitting line drives right at it'."

An Italian TV presenter blagged his way to VIP Champions League treatment at the Bernabeu last week . . . by pretending to be Oscar-winner Nicolas Cage. Paolo Calabresi watched Real's defeat against Roma from the directors' box, was taken into the dressing room afterwards and was photographed being presented with a personalised shirt by club president Ramon Calderon ... despite a) not being American; and b) looking nothing like Oscar-winner Nicolas Cage.

In America, the next few weeks is March Madness', the height of the college basketball season. Hence this radio ad from the Oregon Urology Institute: "When March Madness approaches you need an excuse ... to stay at home in front of the big screen. Get your vasectomy at Oregon Urology Institute the day before the tournament starts. It's snip city."

The station broadcasting the ads has promised to send patients a recovery kit of sports magazines, free pizza delivery and frozen peas to reduce the swelling.

Hats off to Espanyol for the latest marketing wheeze designed to extract every last red cent from football fans: deposit your ashes at our new stadium so we can fleece you even after death. The columbarium, for that is what such a thing is called, will have 5000 niches each capable of holding four urns. Price? E4000 per niche, for a 15-year period.

We don't know what happens when the 15 years are up but, given football clubs' usual treatment of their cash-cows, we assume that Auntie Maria's urn will be booted unceremoniously into touch if relatives fail to stump up again.