It's thumbs up and green lights on for the Trump International Golf Links on 1,400 acres of the beautiful, wild and windswept Menie Estate in Aberdeenshire. A public inquiry deemed the £1billion coastal development a valuable addition to the area and not, as those opposed to the plan maintained, the ecologically crazy vanity project of a publicity-mad billionaire with strange hair and an unusual amount of access to bulldozers.

Trump International Aberdeen will cap a portfolio of Trump National and International Golf Clubs across the United States, and sit alongside other prized, Trump-funded real estate developments, including Trump Tower, Trump Parc, Trump Plaza, and many other places in New York called Trump. Moreover, as a note on the Trump Golf website points out, “The project will only strengthen Mr Trump's connection to Scotland, where his mother grew up in a simple croft.” With the twin courses expected to be ready in 2011, it's not too soon to be browsing the likely range of “ultimate links golf” packages at Menie, available in prices to suit all pockets.

1 Platinum Trump International Aberdeen Membership

Entitles you to unlimited nights in your own, private, split-level, adobe-style condo, clad in traditional imitation Aberdeenshire marble. A personal chef is on hand throughout your stay to see to all meal needs and to serve you from a specially commissioned, highly evocative menu of Scottish-Asian fusion dishes (haggis in ginger and soy sauce, California rolls in whisky, etc).

Collect your courtesy calfskin golf bag from the 89-storey Trump Pro Shop and head for the 1st tee in a chauffeur-driven, solid-silver golf buggy, accompanied by the semi-retired old-school British television comedian of your choice. David Leadbeatter will be on hand in the 700ft tall Trump Butler Cabin at the 9th to video-analyse and re-tool your swing. Benefit also from the Wi-Fi-enabled, greenside conference call facilities, enabling you to consult Tiger Woods on those trickier putts.

You may further wish to choose the optional, in-person commentary on your round from Peter Alliss, the fabled Voice of Golf. (Note: Trump International Aberdeen will not tolerate abusive or violent behaviour of any kind towards its staff and will not hesitate to seek to prosecute anyone it deems guilty of such behaviour.) Later, back at the members-only, rotating spa on the 149th floor of the Trump Clubhouse, which has panoramic windows overlooking Denmark, enjoy a 30-minute foot massage from either Paula Creamer or Ernie Els (depending on availability).

Price £1.4 million per annum Including complimentary polo shirt and gold-plated niblick, but not including tip for Els. Woods appears subject to knee injury.

2 The Full Montgomerie

The perfect, mid-priced golfing getaway package for the budget traveller, featuring two nights in a twin-bed apartment in the 205-storey Trump “Bide-a-Wee” Hotel, plus breakfast, and three rounds of authentic links golf, with its countless opportunities to become really frustrated and angry. With tea-making facilities in room and

free twin-pack of shortbread fingers.

Price £85 per night, per person Excluding green fees.

3 Ancient Crofter's Early-Bird Special

Reconnect with the Trump family history big time, courtesy of this budget-tagged, all-in-one heritage experience. Stay overnight in a miserable, wind-blasted, windowless Trump Stone Building somewhere up the coast. Rise at dawn to eat gruel and tend sheep, then play golf while covered in midge bites. Warning: access to the course available only during days when the famous “Menie haar” - a local, warm-weather fog - reduces visibility to fewer than three feet, meaning that none of the richer guests are using it.

Pay 35p per day Excluding gruel.

Pro-celebrity darts or a game of patience?

This year's Grand Slam of Darts in Wolverhampton will be preceded by The PartyPoker.com Pro-Celebrity Challenge. Herein, live on ITV4 next Friday, such greats of the contemporary darting scene as Phil “The Power” Taylor, Raymond van Barneveld and James “The Machine” Wade will go head to head with people whose abilities on the oche have yet to be demonstrated, such as Mike Tindall, Neil “Razor” Ruddock and Barry McGuigan.

And why not? An appetite-tickling pro-am is, after all, a standard feature of the run-up to the big golf tournaments. And yet precedent suggests it could be a long night - perhaps the longest night in the history of the Wolverhampton Civic Hall, which has known a few. When you invite famous amateurs up to the oche, you tempt trouble, as anyone who can cast their minds back to 2006 and the brimming wheelie bin of incompetence that was Showbiz Darts on Challenge TV, will attest.

It is widely acknowledged that television offers no greater challenge to the viewer's patience than a bad game of darts. And Showbiz Darts was a long series of bad games of darts. In a regulation game of 501, Johnny Vegas and Rowland Rivron each visited the board a patience-corroding 21 times. Before either of them could find the requisite finishing double, the programme ran out of time, and the game had to be settled with a tie-break (highest score with three darts).

Ominously, the cast for the forthcoming Pro-Celebrity Challenge includes two veterans of Showbiz Darts - Phil “The Cat” Tufnell and Michael “Spirit” Le Vell from Coronation Street who, in 2006, during a tuition session in the sumptuous Essex home of Bobby George, managed to stick a practice dart in the skirting board. Incredibly, Le Vell went on to win the tournament. Meanwhile, a chastened Tufnell was sheepishly admitting, “Just because I can play cricket, it doesn't mean I can play darts.” Quite. Darts requires patience, application, enormously refined small-motor skills, a quick brain and nerves of steel - nothing a professional cricketer is ever likely to come across in the course of his duties. It is not to be trifled with or taken up lightly.

One fully appreciates how, in the era of programmes such as Strictly Come Dancing, Dancing on Ice and I'm A Celebrity - Get Me Out of Here!, the genre known as “challenge television” has become a kind of surrogate Swiss finishing school for celebrities, where they can go to learn a few social graces and useful life-skills, such as how to dance, skate, eat kangaroo testicles and lie around in a damp sleeping bag.

That's all very well with certain disciplines, such as golf, ballroom, even football. But darts is on a different level, accomplishment-wise. It should be left to the professionals.

Outspoken Pulis sets a precedent

Tony Pulis quoted Abraham Lincoln against Arsène Wenger (“You can fool some of the people... ”), bringing a presidential gloss to the managerial spat. Long may it continue.

Pulis to Paul Ince: “Efforts and courage are not enough without purpose and direction.” (John F. Kennedy)

Pulis to Rafa Benítez: “Four fifths of our troubles would disappear, if we would only sit down and keep still.” (Calvin Coolidge)

Pulis to Sir Alex Ferguson: “It is a paradox that every dictator has climbed to power on the ladder of free speech. Immediately on attaining power each dictator has suppressed all free speech except his own.” (Herbert Hoover)

Pulis to Wenger again: “The thing that's wrong with the French is that they don't have a word for entrepreneur.” (George W. Bush)