ONE of our favourite personalities ensured a return to this column this week by simply dialling the police. This was Tonya Harding — skater turned boxer, infamous for her men (they kneecap Nancy Kerrigan, she attacks them with hubcaps, and that’s just scraping the surface) — who informed the Washington State PD that she had been attacked by two masked men.

On arrival, the police discovered that Harding, 35, had been a tad liberal with the truth. Two masked men, in fact, equalled one boyfriend.

Harding’s face bore a small cut over her right eye and an abrasion on her left cheek, the result, the boyfriend claimed, of her being drunk, throwing him to the ground and biting his finger. At this stage, Harding-watchers might suggest that he did well to escape without use of the hubcap.

And the Harding-watchers, we know, are many. We know this because her life story, so rich in tragicomic themes, is now being written as an opera and the demand is huge. What started out as a small project at Tufts University in Boston has mushroomed.

Nancy and Tonya: The Opera was commissioned by the Tufts music department, it received a smidgin of publicity in the university press a fortnight ago, the story was picked up by the Boston Herald “and suddenly that night”, Elizabeth Searle, who wrote the libretto, tells us: “I had national television cameras in my living-room.”

The production, originally planned for the university campus theatre, now has a commercial heartbeat. “We’re looking at doing it on a far higher scale,” Searle says, “with a big theatre in town and a totally professional cast.”

Kerrigan and Harding have not been consulted on the production. However, Searle says: “We would welcome them to come and see it. I don’t look to skewer either of them. I believe it is sympathetic to both of them. If they did attend, they would be guests of honour.”

This introduces the splendid possibility of an extraordinary reunion of the eponymous ice queens, more than a decade since their days of sequins and scandal at the Lillehammer Winter Olympics.

And with Harding, the opera has the best publicist anyone could hope for.

A good week for:

1) Pope Benedict XVI, a Bayern Munich fan, who got to meet German demigod Franz Beckenbauer at the Vatican. Beckenbauer described the meeting as “one of the most moving moments of my life”; there was apparently more in it for the Pope, who was presented with a 2006 Fifa World Cup pennant.

2) José Mourinho, possibly top of the Christmas singles chart. The Chelsea team were entertained last weekend by impersonator Mario Rosenstock; so popular was his song José and his Amazing Technicolor Overcoat that plans are afoot to have it released as a single.

3) QPR, who have had a song written for them by Pete Doherty, occasional other half of Kate Moss. The good news is that Doherty’s song is a celebration of QPR becoming FA Cup winners (although it is not known how high Doherty was when the song was written).

A bad week for:

decorum on court. Pat Cash versus Thomas Muster: Muster hits Cash with a ball; Cash, believing this was on purpose, pushes him back and suggests they resolve the dispute like men in the locker-room. These are the “grown-ups” of the seniors’ tour.

Ladak toils to keep a poker face with family

A welcome to the goldfish-bowl public life of Paul Gascoigne for Imraan Ladak, his business partner in the Kettering Town takeover. No secrets can be hidden any longer, not even from your parents.

Only in the spew of Kettering Town publicity did Ladak’s parents realise he was a poker player; better than that, one who has played on the World Poker Tour.

Ladak is 27, hugely successful in business and of the sort of disciplined Asian upbringing that makes a parental search on the internet rather embarrassing when the word “poker” gets more hits than punchball.

“My father was fuming,” he says.

An explanation: he has gambled on the Pro Tour only once, in Paris, as a fill-in for a friend who withdrew. He finished ninth, won €30,000 and gave all the profits to charity. He promises not to do it again.

An expert in his own field

No one will have been happier to see Graham Henry and the All Blacks arrive in Wales yesterday than the villagers of Cefn Coed-y-Cymer.

Henry, unwittingly, has become the champion of their cause. The village rugby field is under threat from council building plans. As this was one of the first local rugby clubs that Henry visited on arrival in Wales in 1998, it has now been dubbed “Henry’s Field” and they intend to enlist the support of the former Wales coach. “I guess he might be preoccupied,” John Davies, a leading campaigner, said, “but we will attempt a reunion. He would be really useful to us.”