The making of a racehorse trainer

My best fun, through ten years reporting European politics for CNN, was bumping around the Continent with sparky young producers and the cream of international cameramen.

Among the shooters was Woj, a pony-tailed Pole with a sardonic sense of humour and so unpronounceable a surname that when we were late joining a flight an airport announcer demanded: ‘Mr R. Oakley and Mr… Mr… Mr Oakley’s companion must go immediately to Gate 23.’ Todd was the only person I ever met who drank Coca-Cola with breakfast. Scotty had his hair parted by a sniper’s bullet in Iraq and lived to tell the tale. Darren was a film director manqué who framed each piece to camera with the meticulous attention of a Dutch miniaturist painter. He filmed my French election interview with the hunters’ party leader when a pigeon whanged an overhead beam and appropriately dropped dead at our feet. The night before, Air France had lost our baggage and given us its Gallicly insouciant emergency overnight package: a toothbrush, a T-shirt and a condom.