The Open Championship gets under way at Turnberry today amid worrying signs that the posh Scottish golfing fraternity is falling behind the times. The organiser is the R&A, taking its name from The Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St Andrews, which has records dating back to its foundation in 1754. The website sets out the various “patrons” — the event is far too refined to have anything as vulgar as sponsors — and among them is Royal Bank of Scotland, “one of Europe’s leading financial services groups”, it boasts. “By market capitalisation it is the second-largest bank in Europe and the UK and currently ranks fifth in the world . . .”

I suggest to the R&A that the site is perhaps a little misleading in light of recent events. “Possibly.” Still, no one rings back. RBS explains that it is hooked into spons ... sorry, patronage until 2010, but I imagine not much longer thereafter. The bank has links with the tournament going back a century. A coincidence, therefore, that golf-mad former chief executive Sir Fred Goodwin, who was blackballed by the R&A after his fall from grace, ha, ha, renewed the “patronage”. A complete coincidence.

Not even the King of Pop sold that many albums

Just how many albums did Michael Jackson sell? Whisper it not to those weird souls who turned up at the O2 on the day he had been due to play there, but perhaps not that many. The received number is 750 million, which entered the public domain in about 2006. But research from The Wall Street Journal suggests that the figure might have been far lower. The trade body has no idea and it is almost impossible to tell because worldwide figures are not collected. But one or two amateur enthusiasts suggest closer to 200 million and say that totals by other huge sellers, such as the Beatles, are often equally inflated. It seems sometimes the figures confuse singles with albums.

Sir Michael Smurfit, the Irish packaging tycoon, is on CNBC’s The Leaders this evening, talking about how easy it was to retire from the company that bears his name. “I thought I was going to find it very difficult, but I found it to be absolutely easy. I don’t miss one second of going to the office. I walked out of the door and never looked back.”

Confusion over the unemployment figures, which showed the jobless total rising faster than those claiming benefits, was not helped by a computer glitch at the Office for National Statistics website. My own theory — that the discrepancy is down to students graduating but too lazy to get out of bed and claim — is not, apparently, accepted by economists.

In the blue corner: Mike Kimberley

My commiserations to Mike Kimberley, chief executive of Group Lotus, who is retiring aged 70 after struggling with back problems over the past year. He is one of the great names in the motor industry, having started as an apprentice at Jaguar and working there with Sir William Lyons, its founder, in its 1950s glory days. He joined Lotus in 1969 and then worked with General Motors, Lamborghini and others before rejoining Lotus in 2005.

Kimberley has had an eventful life, having narrowly escaped death four times: in the bombing of his native Coventry as an infant; from TB; in a car crash; and after collapsing from a tropical disease while co-piloting a helicopter. His back condition, contrary to what one might assume, has nothing to do with climbing in and out of low-slung Lotus cars — he slipped on some ice the winter before last.

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