The turf: Paintball by number

The first I heard of the recent death of Norman St John Stevas was from a questioner after I had delivered a lecture on Margaret Thatcher aboard a liner off the Chilean coast. What came immediately to mind was the story of Mrs T. dispatching one of their fellow Cabinet ministers to tell Norman that he really must stop his dreadful name-dropping. The emissary, I believe it was Chris Patten, duly delivered the message. Lord St John, as he was to become, theatrically clutched his brow and said, ‘Oh, my dear, you’re absolutely right. That’s just what the Queen Mother was telling me last night.’

The foppish Norman never was going to last too long in the Cabinet of the Leaderene, as he called her, not after the day he begged leave to depart early from an afternoon Cabinet committee session to get dressed for a Royal Academy dinner. ‘But Norman,’ she countered, ‘I’m going to the same event and I’m not leaving yet.’ ‘Ah, yes, Prime Minister, but it takes me so much longer to dress than it does you.’

Whatever else he lacked, Norman did have style, something this week’s fortnightly column will inevitably lack as it has to be submitted before the Cheltenham Festival to be read by most only after the conclusion of the year’s best racing event. Apologies, too, that my earlier top tip for the Festival, Fingal Bay, won’t have figured, having pulled a hamstring while I was in South America.

For those who read this on Friday, however, do take a look and see if Paintball, winner of the Imperial Cup Hurdle at Sandown last Saturday, has got into that day’s County Hurdle, for which, as I write, he is available at 10–1.