GRUNTS AND MURMURS

Watching last weekend’s US Open tennis final, the loud grunts coming from the players as they served and returned the ball sounded like two disgruntled jungle primates preparing to have a square go. However, if you were a mammal vocalisation researcher listening in – yes there are such people! – you would have been able to tell whether the winner was going to be Novak Djokovic or Juan Martin Del Potro and put your money on Novak to beat the bookies’ odds.

We know that grunting can distract an opponent – one Dutch player was once docked a point for counter-grunting – and can also help a player to hit significantly harder, but predicting the outcome by grunt? Apparently so. Last year three such researchers at the University of Sussex published a paper in the journal Animal Behaviour entitled “Tennis Grunts Communicate Acoustic Cues to Sex and Contest Outcome”. The conclusion was that, when winning, players’ grunts are lower pitched and losers pitch higher.

So if you’re a grunt aficionado you’d be able to confound the Ladbrokes algorithm and cash in. The lead researcher, one Jordan Raine, analysed 394 varying grunts from Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic in the 2011 Wimbledon final and built his research from there. Nadal’s grunt apparently reveals “deterministic chaos”, akin to a motorbike erupting, while Djokovic’s varies a lot, but the one constant is something that sounds like a stifled sneeze. Raine – where did he get the grant for this? That's what I want to know – also goes to drama schools to clock the sounds budding actors make when they’re told to imagine themselves in a war, or giving birth or falling from a tall building, or perhaps even being in a tennis final?

Raine, an Andy Murray fan, watched our boy in the second round of the US Open against Fernando Verdasco and knew from the first set it wasn’t going to end well because Verdasco’s pitch became lower while Murray just sounded like he was tired and wanted to go home to put his feet up. The denouement became inevitable when Verdasco served and loudly grunted what sounded like “Au revoir”. It was.

SCREAMS AND ARROWS OF OUTRAGEOUS FORTUNE

Still in the strange but true and absolutely irrelevant category, going up to 11 on the Richter scale of sound effects, is the Wilhelm Scream, the most famous and most-used one in movie history, ululating in more than 370 films to date, from Toy Story to Star Wars – where Luke Skywalker shoots a Stormtrooper on the Death Star who falls off the edge – to Lord of the Rings and Reservoir Dogs.

The effect was called Wilhelm after the on-screen name of an actor who gives it out as he is hit by an arrow in the 1953 Western Charge at Feather River. But it was actually created two years earlier in a Raoul Walsh oater, Distant Drums, starring Gary Cooper, where a soldier is dragged underwater by an alligator and as he goes lets out the bellow. It was dubbed-on in post production by the musician and actor Sheb Wooley who was working on the film as a voice extra.

Wooley has never received proper credit for the scream, nor, I doubt, residuals for re-use. And he certainly shouldn’t get any credit for bringing out possibly the worst-ever song in popular music, The Purple People Eater. It was covered by our own teen pop star in a kilt, Leith's own Jackie Dennis, in 1958. And by Judy Garland.

In the trivia of unwanted facts useful only in a pensioners’ pub quiz it also went to Number One in Finland, recorded by British comedian Barry Cryer.

COLD COMFORT

The family-owned clothing company Johnstons of Elgin reports a record year in turnover and profits, and work at its mills in Hawick and Elgin is booming.

A growing liking for cashmere knitwear by customers in warm climates, like Panama and Dubai, is largely responsible, which seems like a bit of a contradiction in terms, not to say climates. But apparently it’s because shoppers frequent air-conditioned malls and if it gets a bit parky they pop into a shop and purchase a fleecy warm jumper.

International sales are up a whopping 30 per cent. The “outstanding” results were reported by the company’s managing director. And could there be a more apt name for him than Simon Cotton?

MAGGIE MAY? SHE CERTAINLY DID

The sex ’n’ drugs lifestyle schlockumentary about Princess Margaret during the week reminded me of the nickname of one of her many boyfriends. He was known as “Bungalow Bill” because, while there was nothing up top, he was exceedingly well furnished below.

It’s not just royalty – sport, too, throws up many wonderful monnikers. There was the Reading football player Fitz Hall who was known as “One Size”, for obvious reasons. Aston Villa midfielder Gilles de Bilde was “Bob”.

The 1990s Spurs midfielder Justin Edinburgh was known as “Musselburgh” because it was just in Edinburgh.

The rugby player Martin Offiah was “Chariots”. Of course. The Gloucestershire cricketer Paul Romaines was “Human”. And when Ewan McGregor's brother was in the RAF his call sign was “Obitwo”.

Then there was the diddy police officer called “Laptop”, because he was a small PC. I’ll stop there before I get to Gordon “Jukebox” Durie.

NEW ROLE FOR THE HAND OF GOD

On Wednesday last week, the French sports diary L’Equipe published a rather cruel cartoon about Diego Maradona as the news came out that he’s been appointed manager of a Mexican side.

I’ve been rather fond of him since witnessing his first international goal for Argentina against Scotland, of course, at Hampden Park in 1979.

It’s been all downhill since he stopped playing, with ballooning weight. He's also a recovering drug addict.

He also collapsed rather dramatically in a box – not the penalty one – watching Argentina against Nigeria in the World Cup in June. Now, rather strangely, he’s been made boss of Dorados, third bottom of the Mexican second division. The club is based in Culiacán, which is the home of the Sinaloa drug cartel. Perhaps he just wanted to cut out the middle men?

MILLAR’S CROSSING

The professional cycling union, the CPA (Cyclistes Professionels Associés), is about as democratic as Stalin’s USSR, with Chris Froome calling it a dictatorship, joined by the present Tour de France winner Geraint Thomas firing his own broadside at the establishment.

The presidency is up for the vote in nine days with the incumbent, Gianni Bugno, going for re-election. Under the rules riders can only vote if they turn up to the meeting, which is in Innsbruck, and given the pro racing season is still going strong it’s not very likely that many will.

The sport has often been in the news for all the wrong reasons, or the pre-eminent one, drugs. In one of those gambits you might describe as setting a gamekeeper to catch a thief (or is it the other way round?) step forward the challenger to Bugno, Scotland’s own David Millar.

Millar, when he was a notable competitor, was banned for two years for, er, doping.