The US Postal Service was in the news this week and for once it wasn't because one of their more disgruntled employees had decided to take their poor morale out on a crowded McDonalds with the help of an automatic weapon. Nope, this time they were defending their decision to deliver a dozen pigs' ears which had been dropped in a mailbox after being addressed to former world heavyweight champion Mike Tyson.

The former champ, one might imagine, has already had his fill of ears, but one fan decided to send a fresh supply, anyway, and the boys in blue opted to forward them to the disgraced boxer on the basis that each carried the correct postage.

"As long as it's not over 108["] in length and girth and under 70 lb and the postage is good, we'll try to deliver it," said spokesman Tony Gervaso this week. "The only things we won't mail for you," he added helpfully, "are cats, dogs and kids."

Well, that's all right then.

The coverage of last weekend's British Grand Prix necessitated ITV's largest ever outside broadcast operation, with over 200 staff combining to relay pictures which were gathered by more than 50 cameras on cars and around the track. In all, the operation cost the network about £750,000.

Reaction to the station's coverage has been mixed, but the decision to hire many of the BBC's old team helped to minimise the upheaval. However, the twominute ad breaks which the commercial station is obliged to carry is still upsetting some of those used to the Beeb's coverage.

Reaction across the water to the switch appeared, in fact, to have been extremely positive at first, with viewing figures for the Australian, Brazilian and Argentinian events all in excess of the corresponding numbers in 1996. But since then, with the exception of the Canadian race, the figures have all been down.

Meanwhile, RTE, which for the first time is competing with a station which is also obliged to periodically interrupt its coverage, seems to have benefitted from the switch between British broadcasters. Its audiences, which range from around 100,000 to 200,000, depending on the time of day that the race is held, have shown healthy growth on last season.

The man who controls all of Formula One's television coverage, and just about every other aspect of the sport, is one Bernie Ecclestone, who has been putting together plans to float his company, Formula One Holdings, in the not too distant future.

Now, it transpires that the company is, in fact, 80 per cent owned by Ecclestone's Croatian wife, Slavica, who confesses that she can't stand the sport.

She may, however, develop a soft spot for it in August if the sale goes ahead, for, if the initial estimates are correct, her shares would nett her something around £1.2 billion.

The British may have just handed Hong Kong back to the Chinese, but Manchester United are determined to pull off a bit of late 20th century colonialism at the expense of the world's most populous nation.

The Reds (the football club that is) are apparently on the lookout for investment opportunities across Asia, and particularly fancy the idea of purchasing a club in China where there has been an explosion in the popularity of football over the last few years.

Clubs in other countries, such as Thailand, Indonesia and Malaysia, are also being looked at by Martin Edwards and fellow Old Trafford directors, who have just been joined on the company's board by a former Umbro executive who is to have responsibility for international development.

While the search for a suitable club to purchase continues, United have just opened a merchandise shop in mainland China to add to their shops already trading successfully in Thailand, Hong Kong, Singapore and Malaysia.

Back in England, meanwhile, Chelsea will next week open their new club shop which, at just over 10,000 square feet, is twice the size of United's retail operation at Old Trafford. Clearly flushed with pride by this achievement and their ever growing on-field Italian connection, the powers-that-be at Stamford Bridge have become a little carried away with the range of stock to be sold underneath the new south stand. Notably, there is a range of scooters, painted in the club colours of course, among the more expensive items to be offered for sale to the club's muchloved supporters on the Fulham Road.

On the Sidelines hasn't been so much surfing the internet over the past week as cruising it, and, given our chosen mode of transport around cyberspace, we were delighted in the course of our travels to stumble upon a world championship which we feel does not get nearly the amount of attention it deserves.

The ninth annual world championship bingo tournament is your chance to be the world champion of bingo!!! This year, according to the Bingo Bugle newspaper (http://www.halcyon.com/(tilde)bluesnow/bingo.html) the event will be even more special because the organisers are throwing in an $8,000 slot machine "tournament" - for some reason this doesn't seem to have world championship status quite yet.

The schedule for the event which - wait for it - takes place on a cruise ship that leaves Miami for the Caribbean on November 9th, boils down to 75 games of bingo in three days, and the competitor who claims the single largest chunk of the $100,000 prize fund over the 72 hours of nailbiting competition will be entitled to call himself/herself champion of the world for the following 12 months.

Dorothy Deering, from Deltona, Florida, finished as runner-up in 1993, but, the Bugle informs us, she's back this year and aiming for glory. This will, in fact, be Dorothy's third bid for the title, for she was fourth when it all started in 1988 and she still has the souvenir jacket to prove it.

"After all these years, we (well, she could hardly leave husband Bill behind now, could she?) still have those jackets and we still use them," says Dorothy. "I'm not sure whether that's a testimony to how much we enjoyed the cruise or how well made the jackets are." Hmmmmm, seems to us that's it's a testimony to something else altogether.

Wait till the guys at the IOC get a load of this.

Former Olympic gold medallist Samuel Lee won a $250,000 settlement against former Hollywood madam Heidi Fleiss for slander earlier this week after the woman with the most famous contacts book in America had described the former doctor, his policeman son and another Beverly Hills officer as being "homosexuals and sexual deviants" on a local radio show.

Lee, who gained diving medals at the 1948 and 1952 Games, won the award from Superior Court Judge Arnold Gold, who also instructed Fleiss to pay Samuel Lee II and his colleague, Patricia Carso, a total of $90,000 in damages.

What exactly Fleiss had against the former Olympic champion remains unclear, although it's a little more understandable why she holds a gripe against Lee junior and Carso - they were the arresting officers in the case that ended up with her being sentenced to 37 months (she's still there) in a federal jail for tax evasion and money laundering.

A sort of Fleiss for horses would be, perhaps, just the person to help bring poor Cigar out of his shell. But, until such a professional can be located, the insurance company which had to pay up when the greatest American racehorse of recent times failed to prove a hit at stud have had to turn to experts from other fields.

Assicuazion Generali, who were recently forced to pay $25 million to Cigar's long-time owner, Allen Paulson, when the stallion failed to, er, deliver the goods in a full season at stud, have now pinned their hopes of recovering some of the payout on vet Phil McCarthy.

"The best thing going for us now," says McCarthy, "is that we know that performance athletes often have fertility problems after they quit competing."

With this in mind, Cigar has been given his own private sixacre paddock on a farm in Paris, Kentucky, in which generally just to relax, put his feet up and think positive things about fatherhood.

The approach is to be given a year or so to pay dividends, after which the insurers are likely to start looking around for other ways of recouping at least part of their loss. At that stage perhaps, the prospect of becoming known as Chum rather than dad may prompt the former Breeders' Cup Classic winner.

Please send correspondence to On The Sidelines, Sports Dept, The Irish Times, 11-15 D'Olier Street, Dublin 2, or e-mail emalone@irish-times.ie