Rider Mick Fitzgerald was asked by his careers master when still at school what he wanted to be. ‘I’ve half a mind to be a jump-jockey,’ he declared. ‘Good,’ replied the laconic pedagogue, ‘because that’s all you’ll need.’ Fitzgerald is actually one of the brightest men in the saddle, but though the thrills of the
It is before 7 a.m. in the office at Lambourn’s Kingsdown Stables It is before 7 a.m. in the office at Lambourn’s Kingsdown Stables. Trainer Jamie Osborne is on his own but brews fresh coffee from a cafetière, served in matching mugs. Jamie, who always had style as well as courage in the saddle, does
The late Jim Callaghan told a few of us one day about life in the House of Lords after being an MP in the Commons. ‘In the Commons you wonder if you’ll survive the next election. In the Lords you wonder if you’ll live until Christmas.’ On his first day in the Lords, the Whip
Keeping thin enough to star in your sixties comes hard, and the recently sadly deceased George Melly once inquired of Mick Jagger why the rock supremo’s face was so lined. ‘Laughter lines,’ replied the Rolling Stone. Keeping thin enough to star in your sixties comes hard, and the recently sadly deceased George Melly once inquired
We had been through so much together. Racing not just on the domestic scene but also in Melbourne, Mauritius and Maisons-Lafitte. Together over 15 years we had been bird-watching in Venezuela, Costa Rica and the Gambia, Madagascar and the Isle of Mull. But at Newmarket last Saturday somebody relieved me of my long-cherished Zeiss binoculars.
Sadly the racing season both for pure-bred Arabians and even for camels was over when I was in Qatar last weekend. But I did discover that Arab mums, like British trainers, tend to wear rose-tinted spectacles. ‘To an Arab mother,’ the Gulf saying goes, ‘every donkey is a gazelle.’ I do rather like, too, the
There is no cannier, or more careful, man in racing than Sheriff Hutton trainer Mick Easterby, 76 this weekend. If he didn’t exist, Yorkshire would have to hew him out of Wensleydale stone. He says he would like to win the Lottery and spend all his days counting, not spending, the money. He collects farms
George Bernard Shaw once asked a female acquaintance on a cruise ship, ‘Will you sleep with me for £10,000?’, and received an affirmative answer. When he followed up by asking her, ‘Would you sleep with me for £10’, the lady took considerable umbrage, demanding furiously, ‘What do you think I am?’ ‘That,’ said the playwright,
Newmarket it isn’t. Forget clipped hedges, purring security gates and decorated dovecotes. At Gary Moore’s yard in Woodingdean there isn’t even a name over the stables the other side of the road from the ten-furlong start on Brighton’s racetrack. I’ve seen grander allotment huts than the cluster of wooden and breezeblock stables stretching down the
There was at least one game girl on the race train back from Newbury on Saturday. ‘You didn’t smell very good on the sofa this morning,’ the carriage heard her tell a potential swain on her mobile. ‘But if you’re up for a celebration tonight then I am, too.’ On the basis of a flat-mate’s
What makes a successful racehorse trainer? Patience and an eye for detail. Man management and a flair for publicity. But the right genes help, too, and there Nick Gifford, the handler of the first-class hurdling prospect Straw Bear, does have an advantage. Son of the former trainer and ex-champion jockey Josh Gifford and of an
A punting friend at Kempton Park told me about the school class last week who were asked to stand up and talk about what their fathers did for a living. The sons of bakers and binmen, stockbrokers and scaffolders all happily recounted their parents’ daily routines. But one little lad at the back refused to
While you don’t have to be a masochist to be a jump jockey it surely helps. You can expect a fall, on average, every 13 rides and it is the only profession in which you are followed round by an ambulance. Self-flagellation, too, seems to be part of the picture. Former champion jockey Richard Dunwoody
When I’m good I’m very good, but when I’m bad I’m better In a Cary Grant film in which she effectively played herself, Mae West declared, ‘When I’m good I’m very good, but when I’m bad I’m better.’ Exotic Dancer, the six-year-old trained by Jonjo O’Neill who runs in the familiar pink silks of Sir
Required by the day job to be in St Andrews on Friday night, reporting the latest example of governmental hope over experience in the Northern Ireland power-sharing talks, I was determined still to make it to Champions’ Day at Newmarket. Sir Percy’s first appearance since the Derby, a cracking contest for the Cesarewitch and the
A vicar at a wedding I was at last week told of a driver who broke down with a lorryload of penguins. He flagged down another lorry and offered its driver £100 to deliver his consignment promptly to the zoo. His own vehicle repaired, he was alarmed when he got to town a few hours
Listing page content here Watching the woman in front of me in the Ascot Tote queue backing five horses in the same race on Saturday reminded me of Lloyd Bentsen, one of the best US politicians never to become president, who died last week. Asked once if it wasn’t rather unfair running simultaneously for vice-president
We all have our rituals. Swans and ducks migrate, the ones that aren’t riddled with H5N1 anyway. We all have our rituals. Swans and ducks migrate, the ones that aren’t riddled with H5N1 anyway. At an appropriate season, starlets and cameramen cluster in Cannes. Canny financiers ‘sell in May and go away’. And invariably at
‘The unexpected ones are always the sweetest,’ said J.P. McManus ‘The unexpected ones are always the sweetest,’ said J.P. McManus after his Hasty Prince had followed half a dozen duck eggs by running out the 14–1 winner of the first at Sandown last Saturday. Following the extra-marital cavortings of deputy prime minister John Prescott, built
It was lunchtime at a Church school and there was a large dish of rosy apples. A nun placed a note on the fruit: ‘Take only one: God is watching.’ Further down the line was a dish of biscuits. ‘Take all you like,’ one child was heard telling another, ‘God is watching the apples.’ That