How many unexpected blows can a viewer take? When Jim Furyk confirmed the United States team's Ryder Cup victory over Europe, it completed a desolate 24 hours for armchair-based sports fans clutching their faces in disbelief after the defeat of Darren Gough in the first round of Hole in the Wall.

Like Europe, this rising star of challenge television (a veteran of Strictly Come Dancing and Beat the Star, among so many others) had history emphatically on his side. True, the BBC's new teatime show required the portly Yorkshire fast bowler to be compressed unhelpfully into a squeezy, silver package, like a spaceman's breakfast. Then he had to stand on a ledge and fit himself through a hole in an advancing polystyrene wall, or else get knocked backwards into a swimming pool.

But we know Gough to be a professional. Look at the way he beamed broadly and traded openly camp banter with his opposite number, Anton Du Beke, the dancer. (Sample: “I'm not as bendy as you, Anton.”) Gough was given a further boost at the top of the show when Dale Winton, the host, described him as “everybody's favourite cricketer”, perhaps neglecting the claims on the popular imagination of such men as Denis Compton, Garry Sobers, Brian Lara and, of course, Mark Ramprakash.

Nevertheless, before you could say “Boo Weekley”, the scoreboard was turning red before your eyes and Du Beke was romping it. Incidentally, did we mention that this format was imported from Japan? Some people will remember how Japanese game shows used to be, as far as British television was concerned, merely a source for haughty clip shows, offered up for our amazement and some superior sniggering. Now, here we have the BBC borrowing one. And some people may go farther and infer that, from a light entertainment point of view, we must be officially at the bottom of a barrel, scrabbling feebly with bloodied and broken fingers.

Well, it's a point of view. At the same time the sight of a soon-to-retire paceman in a silly helmet being knocked into a pool, again and again, by a series of automated barriers does take on a certain kind of hypnotic charm and provide a few bonuses in terms of rarity (at least at this early point in the show's scheduled ten-week run). And also, as Jonathan Pearce, the commentator, said: “The 'flying frog' shape is famously difficult.” Let's not despair just yet.

At least the sports-related male contestants on Strictly Come Dancing are still standing after the notoriously random first-night vote-off - a lottery, people like to call it, although, strictly speaking, that's the show that comes after.

It lifts the gloom slightly. Andrew Castle, the former British No1 tennis player turned GMTV heart-throb and this column's tip for significant ballroom honours this season, looked encouragingly floor-competent. Mark Foster, the Great Britain Olympic flag-carrier, clearly has, at the very least, the right kind of body for a sheer nylon vest. Austin Healey, of rugby union and hair-replacement fame, showed promise. All of them can kick on from here.

The next afternoon Foster found time in his hectic dancing schedule to lead a parade of Olympic medal-winners around Stamford Bridge at half-time during the match between Chelsea and Manchester United. Now, tiresome quibblers are going to point out that Foster didn't actually win a medal in Beijing and that it is a bit rich for someone who finished 23rd in their event to join Ben Ainslie, Phillips Idowu and others on a lap of honour a month later, complete with waving and reciprocal overhead clapping. But they misunderstand.

In Foster's case, it's not about Beijing any more, or mere, dry matters of the record book. When a man takes part in Strictly, his status in any company is assured and a crowd will always come to its feet in his presence, or, at any rate, look up vaguely from its programme.

Our award for candid camera sequence of the month - and probably of the season - goes to Sky Sports for its shot of United's dugout as Mike Phelan, the assistant manager, narrowly avoided causing Sir Alex Ferguson a cardiac arrest by bursting a balloon that had drifted in from the crowd. I must have watched this about nine times and its comic grandeur only increases with each fresh viewing - not just the way that Ferguson's shoulders are, for a split second, higher than his head, but also the revelatory reflex that causes the manager to spin round on Phelan and tell him to “f*** off”.

“Mischievous”, they tend to call Ferguson, but don't go jumping out of a cupboard and shouting “boo!” at him, the message seems to be, unless you fancy a mouthful or worse.

See the Ferguson balloon burst outburst online at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xd02d-Pn-Rs&NR=1