As brutal as the grouchy author could be in lampooning the Mid-West — a land with cornfields “the size of Belgium” — he was, it transpires, doing his home town a disservice.

While spawning few celebrities with a reach to rival Bryson’s, Iowa’s sleepy state capital has produced others of more suspect claims.

Anyone recall Harriet Nelson, erstwhile of the Fifties sitcom The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet? Or maybe you are familiar with Cloris Leachman, the TV star of similar vintage who found fame as landlady Phyllis Lindstrom?

Either way, you will soon have heard all about Lisa Pavin, the third member of Des Moines’s unlikely trinity of B-grade actresses.

Mrs Pavin: model wife or loopy narcissist? Most American reporters at Celtic Manor are in the second camp, convinced that if anyone here can trigger an international incident, it is not Colin Montgomerie but their own captain’s other half.

“I really don’t deserve this much attention,” she protests. In which case, why is she pictured pouting on the front cover of Avid Golfer magazine, naked except for the stars and stripes?

Luscious Lisa, as we should surely now call her, irritates precisely because she does believe she merits such exposure. To make up for the weak public projection of husband Corey, she is deciding to stand by her man more zealously than even Tammy Wynette.

Her arrival this week at Cardiff airport, where she assumed centre stage in front of Tiger Woods and clutched one handle of the Ryder Cup, was reminiscent of the First Lady disembarking Air Force One.

This ebullient Vietnamese woman has undoubtedly endured hardships alien to most sporting WAGs, moving to the US after the fall of Saigon and forced by the early death of her mother to bring up two younger sisters. But this is still no rationale for posturing as Michelle Obama.

The ever-impressive Michelle is empowered by the office of First Lady to achieve political good, whether in promoting her husband’s healthcare bill or tackling childhood obesity.

By contrast, the role of Ryder Cup wife is never more than a confection. Lisa herself — aka ‘the Captainess’ — concedes that her duties in Wales encompass nothing more elevated than deciding the team menus and co-ordinating clubhouse decor.

At its worst, the Ryder Cup can be an occasion of ocean-going vaingloriousness, and few exemplify this better than Mrs Pavin. Her manual for marital support in this game makes for nauseating reading: “Golf is a very individual sport, so when you come home, your wife is your best friend, your confidante, your lover, your sports psychologist.”

Her beloved also sounds a tad uxorious when he says of her magazine photo-shoot: “I thought it was a beautiful picture. I’m lucky to have her as my wife.”

Next thing, Corey will be asking for ‘Captainess’ to be accepted as Lisa’s official title. It is not so uncommon among men of a certain insecurity: Sir Ben Kingsley is famously precious in insisting he is referred to by his knighthood; hence Brazilian Daniela Barbosa, his fourth wife, is inevitably Lady Kingsley. Not 10 years earlier, Ms Barbosa had been working as a waitress.

To question Lisa Pavin’s absurdly conspicuous role at this Ryder Cup is to invite accusations of chauvinism. One reporter who asked her why wives were so involved drew the icy response: “Why wouldn’t they be?” During the recent US PGA at Whistling Straits, not even a verbal altercation between her man and a TV reporter could pass without her submitting her two cents’ worth.

I blame Sally Bercow. The outspoken wife of the Commons Speaker turned up this week for a fringe meeting at the Labour party conference, declaring: “I know you think that I shouldn’t be here, that I should be walking 10 paces behind my husband or at home, making cucumber sandwiches.”

It was a predictably shrill reaction to legitimate criticism. What she should not be doing, in the eyes of most sane observers, is ridiculing the South African president on her Twitter feed, describing George Osborne, the Chancellor, as “mental”, or lambasting the Pope just hours before the Speaker was due to meet him.

John Bercow should be capable of fighting these battles for himself. But then I note that both he and Corey Pavin are of somewhat diminutive stature (Bercow being 5ft 6in, Pavin a scarcely more lofty 5ft 9in).

Essentially, their statuesque wives are acting as self-appointed bodyguards — the sole useful function, perhaps, of playing the Captainess.