Oddest central locking issue in my early R53 cooper S

[mikeyr]

Got the strangest symptoms when locking my car via (two button) key fob. Any thoughts on likely cause?

• Locks 50% of time perfectly fine from keyfob when parked
• When not working the car won't lock from keyfob, the locks will go down, lights flash but then they immediately rise back up again
• Autolock works perfectly (E.g. locks itself once start driving)!!!
• Car will lock if I put physical key in lock and hold it, after a couple of attempts it'll 'out fight' it's desire to unlock itself again
• When I disconnected battery for a few minutes it resolved itself for a couple of days

Thoughts so far were a sticking lock (but then why does it autolock with no issues)? Could it be related to the windows drop in some way?

Thoughts welcome!