Personal hell in ’Nam continues with collapse of another stout party

BEFORE recounting my Cheltenham heroics, I think it is only fair, in the interests of transparency and reader understanding, to explain how it came to be that I am widely regarded as the mug punter the other mug punters call ‘The Guv’nor’.

Put simply, my engagement with the racing world has never been anything other than brief and unhappy. Two examples will suffice to tell the tale.

Way back in the mists, when I was but a cub reporter for the fledgling Hot Press, it fell to me to write the gossip column at the back of the magazine. Flicking through the papers one day as I ripped off — sorry, I mean researched — material for my column, I spotted that a horse belonging to the guitar hero Eric Clapton had won some race or other in England.