Scraping a living for the love of it

Jockey Martin Ferris fits neatly into the journeyman category but today he gets a first opportunity to fulfil a childhood dream of riding in the Grand National - and make his late father proud.

Normally you meet someone for a chat and you offer them their lunch. Or coffee and a biscuit, maybe.

That wasn’t the approach with Martin Ferris this week. Ferris is a jockey, one. He was trying to make weight for this weekend’s racing in Aintree, two.