In the eccentric world of British sport the fact that the Ryder Cup is looming large on the horizon means only one thing - imminently we are going to have to sit through that diplomatic dunce, Nick Faldo, dropping verbal clangers and making his usual pig's ear of attempting graciousness amid the ceremonial duties of being Europe's captain.

Of course, I am expressing a peculiarly British view of Faldo (though as it happens, I am a Scot). In the USA, on the contrary, they think he is amazing, just awesome. This intriguing Faldo case is yet another example of those who feel liberated and even come into their own when released from the imprisoning confines of their own culture.

I have to admit, as a sporadic observer and reporter on golf over the years, I have winced more than smiled whenever Faldo has been around. Does he actually revel in being the occasional clod or dope? The latest, excruciating example - and on the night you just knew it was coming - was the occasion of the Association of Golf Writers annual dinner at Southport in July, where the bold Nick was due in front of the microphone after the urbane Peter Alliss had graced us for around 10-15 minutes.

In truth, few of us would have wanted to follow Alliss that night, but that still didn't stop Faldo, miraculously lacking any sense of self, bounding to the podium to bludgeon us once more with his gormless humour. Every time I see Faldo I'm reminded of some of those characters made famous in British TV sitcoms - like something out of Some Mothers Do 'Ave 'Em - who specialise in the art of gaucheness.

One of the first times I saw Faldo up close - and by that I mean being in the same room as him and standing about six feet away - I watched him deftly reach down and pat his then-caddie Fanny Sunesson's bottom after winning the 1992 Open Championship at Muirfield. Me and another reporter who witnessed this little act simply looked at eachother with rolling eyes, while Faldo cackled at his self-made amusement. Oh, to be such daft, dipsy fun!

Some reporters got a bit indignant with Faldo that week when, following his Muirfield triumph, he made his famous, clanging comment about thanking the press "from the heart of my bottom", though I didn't mind that at all. Good on anyone, I say, who takes a pop at people as self-important as the media. But the point was, it wasn't the moment, that driech afternoon on the winner's rostrum at Muirfield, to make such a clumping comment. As Faldo spoke those very words I looked around and saw mainly disapproving Scottish faces - these are spectators who know their golf, and know that such occasions as the Open Championship winner's speech is supposed to be above such twitteries.

Yet Faldo is thoroughly intriguing. He has come into his own as a TV pundit, especially in America where - and there's no other way of putting this - alternative cultural mores mean the perception of him is quite different. The quirky Faldo, the funny Faldo, the Faldo of "English eccentricity"...they love him over there for being all of that. In the USA there is a cultural blindspot to the cumbersome, sometimes dunce-like Faldo we've come to know and hold dear.

There is a boyishness - even an infantilism - about Faldo which serves him well when he is not being subjected to more earnest analysis. The most perfect example of this I can recall was one particularly wet and windy Irish Open from the mid-1990s, when someone took a famous photograph of Faldo standing in the rain, Benny Hill-like, smiling like a drunken sailor, his cap on squint, saluting with his right hand. This was the sort of wacky, impish Faldo who, around that time, helped to sell his humour to Americans to such an extent that he landed roles in TV commercials over there which might otherwise have gone to stand-up comics.

"He is something of an ass," an American sportswriter once said to me of Europe's 2008 Ryder Cup captain."You're in a minority among your fellow citizens, aren't you?" I replied.

In the States, claim the British slightly loftily, they don't do irony, and Faldo, hand on heart, wouldn't know irony if it smacked him with a shovel. He certainly doesn't do subtlety, either, except when he held short-irons or putters in his glory days on a golf course.

All of this only half-matters in the context of leading Europe into battle in Kentucky in three weeks' time - but it's an important half. The most important aspect of being a Ryder Cup captain, I suppose, is the ability to have "a psychological feel" for your team: knowing who is hot, who should play with whom, and just getting your human fixtures and fittings right. And Faldo, I daresay, may prove excellent at this.

But a Ryder Cup captain must also be a diplomat, and say the right thing, in the traditions of Bernard Gallacher for Europe and Tom Watson for the USA. In this vein, toilet-humour, the type so beloved of the dippy Faldo, will not go down well. I just hope Faldo in Kentucky has a smidgeon of Bernard Darwin about him and a few less dollops of Benny Hill, though I'll believe it when I see it.