my q & a.

​This ‘blog’ will defeat my self-imposed limit of 1,000 words. I hope it is worth it.
As it will be approximately a thousand years before the Racing Post ask me to sit their Q & A (actually hell will have frozen over well before my name comes to the top of the list) I thought I would just go ahead and bananas to them.
1) What advice would you give your ten-year-old self?
Do not allow yourself to be scared of anything. Fear corrupts the true self. And, eleven, twelve and thirteen are the worst years in the process of ‘growing up’. Skip them and go straight to fourteen.
2) What is your earliest racing memory?
The opening credits of Grandstand, the racing segment.
3) What’s your biggest ambition in racing?
To be top man at the B.H.A. and to sort out all of racing’s self-inflicted woes. You did ask.
4) What’s been your best moment in racing?
There has been so few it is almost impossible to know where to start. Or stop.
5) If you could play any other sport, which would it be and why?
Woman’s’ football. After I’m long gone it is the sport that will rule the world. And in the next life I’m coming back as a woman. I have seen the future and it doesn’t have testicles.
6) What do you think racing does best?
It is a working-class sport underpinned by the fabulously rich. It is something we should celebrate and would if the latter were not as influential in the sport as they are.
7) Other than better prize-money what is the one thing you would change about racing?
One? That’s tricky. I have a list comprising one-hundred and three different things I would change. Off the top of my head – I would rip up the present racing calendar and start from scratch. It is archaic, too congested and allows Easter to mess-up the time between Cheltenham and Aintree. I would also have Royal Ascot before the Derby, if Her Majesty would agree.
8) Who has been the greatest influence on your career?
What career? But if I had to say a name, I would say Desert Orchid.
9) What’s Your Favourite Film?
Sunshine over Leith. What’s not to like?
10) What’s your favourite alcoholic beverage?
I adore the word beverage but dislike all alcohol. It’s a teetotallers life for me. Which explains so much. So very much.
11) What’s your favourite sitcom?
Big Bang Theory.
12) What have you made of this year’s ‘Love Island’?
Are you serious? ‘Love Island’! It’s on far too late at night for a lark like me.
13) The next question is n/a, so I’ll move swiftly on. Lambourn has a night life? Do the residents know?
14) What’s your favourite meal?
Given that I am unable to eat a man’s size meal anymore, I will have to go for poached egg on toast.
15) When are you happiest?
Happy? What’s that? No, I’ve given it some thought and can’t think of a solitary thing. Oh, I was very happy for a short while when Bryony won the Ryanair and I will be close to ecstasy if the Lionesses win the World Cup. I was happy when we voted to leave the E.U. but the traitorous M.P.s at Westminster have even taken the joy out of that.
16) If you could meet one person, past or present, who would it be?
I would like to meet the people who kidnapped and killed Shergar. I would just like to know.
17) What has been your most embarrassing moment?
Isn’t life one long embarrassment? I have fallen asleep in the dentist chair, several times. I have boarded a train for Bristol only for it to be going to Newcastle. I was asked for my ticket on a London to Bristol train only to remember as the ticket inspector approached that for safe keeping I had put in my lunch box, which I had left on the platform seat as at the last moment I realised I was sitting on the wrong platform and – you know the rest. Must I go on? Referring to Richard Hoiles, in a column I was writing at the time for ‘Racing Ahead’ as Andrew Hoiles and telling everyone that I thought he was the best commentator racing has ever had. Better than even Peter O’Sullevan.
18) How do you relax away from racing?
Relax? What’s that? I am a coiled spring of unintentional inactivity. When examined by a doctor or physio they constantly tell me to ‘relax’ and I tell them ‘for me, this is relaxed’. But if you want a pastime – I harvest wood from the local river. Though as the river is tidal, you have to have one eye on the wet stuff.
19) What is the strangest/funniest thing you have seen on a racecourse?
Personal anecdote, don’t you know. When I was involved in a point-to-point yard we had a horse called Mischievous Jack. He was a tinker and no mistake. On his first run he whipped around at the start, gave the rest a fence start, had almost caught the leaders after 2-mile only to fall. On his second start he fell at the first, jumped off the course and disappeared followed by a huntsman. As we saddled up our next runner, which won by the way (first run for 2 years) an announcement on the Tannoy asked for representative of Mischievous Jack to make their way to the nearest village as the horse was in a man’s garden eating his cabbages. I suggested as he was such a pain-in-the-ass we leave him there and go home to an easier life. After winning his last two races of that season, the second beating the course record, as a five-year-old at Higham in a Men’s Open, he was worth, apparently, a six-figure sum. That was when I was embarrassed.
20) What sort of music are you into?
Love Katie Melua. I I go on Desert Island Discs I shall probably choose eight of her songs. ‘Tiny Alien’ is the one I would save from the waves.
21) What’s your biggest fear?
Snakes. Someone once said that snakes were made of one-per-cent plasticine and ninety-nine per-cent evil. What is the point of them? There isn’t. You can’t even race them. Or cuddle them. And they hate all of mankind, especially babies. Kill everyone and make ladies handbags out of them. I also don’t like sloths. My other half thinks I’m weird because of it.
22) Social media – friend or foe?
I have absolutely nothing to do with it. Don’t have a mobile phone, don’t have any social media accounts. Snakes would love social media. And sloths.
23) Who would be your four ideal dinner party guests?
I have thought about this question a lot. Too long, no doubt, and come up with a good number of lists. I have decided upon these four people. Richard D. Hall, Andrew Johnson, the head of MI5, who ever holds that position when this fantasy comes true, and the head of counter-terrorism. I have my reasons. Food will not be required.
24) Give us one horse to follow for the rest of the season?
Pinatuba.