Diary from Las Vegas: the chips are down

Las Vegas never lets you down. We have arrived here to be greeted by a casino floor health scare in which the concern is whether the lead content in gaming chips may be hazardous to your health. At least that was the headline bellowing out of the Las Vegas Sun yesterday. No one seems to be concerned that maybe gaming itself is the real health issue and not the chips.

Meanwhile the round-up news from the Vegas marathon on Sunday was that there were over 200 running Elvises plus 56 couples who elected to renew their marriage vows at the wedding church at the mile seven stage. And I also discovered that Lennox Lewis is to go up against Nadia Comaneci (and others) in an American, celebrity version of "The Apprentice".

But perhaps even stranger was my discovery yesterday that Floyd Mayweather may not be so bad after all. I would not go as far as saying that I warmed to him, but he didn't match his image. He sat and talked to the press for some 15 minutes and, yes, he was pretty smug. But what he was not was obnoxious. Confident? Yes. Pleased with himself? Of course.

And, as he said, he fed 600 of the poor at Thanksgiving recently. That bit of detail got lost somewhere.

So this is becoming awkward. We are beginning to warm to the pantomime clown. Is it a Vegas thing?

OWEN SLOT