BLESS my cotton socks, I’m in the news – that’s the percussively catchy opening line of The Teardrop Explodes’ song Reward. Somehow I doubt Eldrick Tiger Woods will be humming that refrain for quite a while.

Golf’s runaway number one, entitled by his achievements on fairways and greens to be legitimately called “the Phenom”, is certainly in the news, indeed smack, bang, wallop in the centre of a current affairs maelstrom.

Whatever the domestic nature of the incidents that led to his collision with a fire hydrant and a tree while steering a hefty and expensive vehicle away from his palatial home in the early hours of a Floridian morning – the world’s foremost golfer surely can’t be such a bad driver – Tiger now has the planet’s press and paparazzi plainly and painstakingly on his tail. And even if he has declined the chance to appear at his own tournament this week, the Chevron Classic in California, there will be no shaking them off just yet.

Until his first reappearance in public when he will have to forego the sanctuary of unchallenged statements on his personal website, Woods will be dogged by the pack, pursued and pressed, some would say harangued and harassed, until the media gets fed up. And that will not be for quite a while yet. As they say, this baby will run and run.

Already, the curious incident of the slog at night has provoked an absolute wind farm of hot air, a mountain range of moral high ground and more speculation to fuel a decade’s worth of football transfer tales, largely because no one has yet come clean. No one has yet spilled those beans of jumping Jehosophat juiciness.

The “transgressions”, of which Woods made mention in a statement on his website, even prompted a national phone-in on Five Live hosted by the ubiquitous and unctuous Nicky Campbell. Now that is the price of fame.

Woods’ eventual injuries – despite the initial ramped-up conjecture on Sky Sports which virtually had the world number one rapping on death’s door – proved only to be minor, but the damage to Woods’ reputation in subsequent revelations about his normally closely-guarded private life will prove damaging, if not irreparable.

It is not entirely unreasonable to expect that a private life should remain in essence private, especially where at-odds couples have their own children to consider. They have a right not to have their problems played out and splayed out in public.

Since the early-hours spin and din of his careering misdemeanour, Woods has persisted with that argument.

But where Tiger’s protestations are stymied by unplayable ground, is that here is a man who has perfected an image of squeaky cleanliness.

He might not have calculatedly cultivated such an aura, but he has not distanced himself from it either and the clean-cut, lantern-jawed image, has proved as attractive to sponsors as the magnificent way in which he has acted as an ambassador for the sport by his own athletic deeds.

Over the decade or more in which he has ruled as golf’s number one, Woods has amassed the greatest assembly of individual sponsorships of any current sportsman or woman.

And of those deals I wonder just what razor giants Gillette will make of all this, especially in the wake of the Thierry Henry cheating handball controversy that is now enveloping France’s football skipper after his far from handsome contribution to the Republic of Ireland’s exit from next summer’s World Cup finals in South Africa.

Both Woods and Henry, alongside world tennis number one Roger Federer, are the three prime personalities spearheading Gillette’s global brand marketing campaign.

It’s totally wrong to put our favourite sportsmen and women on pedestals of unimpeachable standing. They are not paragons of virtue, they are not sainted icons. It is grossly unfair to expect them to be so.

But for all that, it does not reduce the gut-wrenching feeling of discovering that your own sporting idols are as clay-footed as they are as deft with ball, or bat, or club, on the pitch, stadium, arena or course.

Fans invest so much time and heartfelt emotion in their favourites – individuals and teams, sometimes even national squads – that there’s a genuine feel-bad factor when it all goes club-head shaped.

After all, we are all only human – but so are they – so get off the high horse.