Jumps

When famous folk die you sometimes fish for memories of any encounter you may have had with them. The memorial service for Nigel Lawson spurred no memory-searching for me. I will never forget meeting him at around 4 a.m. on the pavement outside The Grand in Brighton on 12 October 1984, surrounded by blue police tape and with emergency service sirens blaring following the IRA’s attempt to blow up Margaret Thatcher’s cabinet at that year’s Conservative party conference. He was in pyjamas and a blue, braided dressing-gown; I was still in my suit having fortunately walked out of The Grand about half an hour before the bomb went off. I

First the company report. Readers who invested a tenner on the nose each time our Twelve to Follow for the Flat turned out have made a wallet-warming profit of £638. Only the management consultants on whom a panicky government has showered gold-plated contracts with no questions asked have done better than that in these Covid times. The dozen contested 39 races and seven won, four of them more than once. The standout was James Fanshawe’s filly Audarya. After a 12-1 Newcastle success she was sent to France for the Group One Prix Jean Romanet. Ridden by Ionitz Mendizabal, she won by a neck with British bookmakers paying 33-1. On-course investors