As part of the after-dinner entertainment on a cruise ship recently, I encountered a couple of comedians. One claimed he had recently shared a booking with a topless ventriloquist. I bet nobody saw her lips move. What was noticeable in both acts, given the seaborne clientele, was the concentration on jokes about ageing, like the
A fresh new breeze is wafting through British racing. Led by the enthusiastic Sheikh Fahad Al Thani, the Qatar ruling family is investing heavily in buying British bloodstock and, through their Qipco holdings, sponsoring the richest day’s racing in Britain. At first British racegoers accepted the newcomers with a polite smile, seeing them as another
Clive Cox, once a conditional jockey in Lambourn, fell at the first fence one year in the Grand National. ‘Mind you,’ he told the owners, ‘we were going well at the time.’ It helps in handling horses to have a sense of humour and there is nothing conditional now about Clive Cox’s presence at the
Ginger Rogers, clever girl, did everything that Fred Astaire did — but she did it backwards. I am looking backwards in this Turf column and doing so without apologies because it was such a wonderful Ascot. The sheer delight on the Queen’s face when Estimate made her the first reigning monarch to have a winner
For a moment it seemed incongruous reading obituaries in the same week of Sir Henry Cecil and of Esther Williams, the Hollywood star whom most of us only ever remember seeing in a swimsuit amid whirling patterns of leggy lovelies in water ballets. Then I recalled her comment that the only thing Hollywood’s moguls ever
After Ruler Of The World had won the 234th Derby, the owners, the Coolmore team, were asked if it hadn’t been something of a hostage to fortune giving the horse such a name. Drily John Magnier replied, ‘Not really. There have been plenty of bad American presidents.’ Given the struggle between the two top racing
I have a weakness for the versifier Ogden Nash and one of my favourites is his observation: Shake and shake the ketchup bottle First none will come and then a lot’ll. It has been a bit like that this past year with my punting. Last year’s Twelve to Follow for the Flat didn’t lose us
Working partnerships don’t always bring the results expected. I heard lately of a 12-year-old girl encouraged to spend a day on work experience with a relative in the building trade. After a day sorting correspondence, tidying files and making cups of tea on demand, young Emily returned home with a crisp ten pound note. Her
The trouble with writing about people is their friends. Back when woolly mammoths roamed the earth and I was Crossbencher in the Sunday Express, I wrote admiringly about the burgeoning prospects of a young MP. He was of Dutch origin and I suggested that he might become the first Hollander to lead the British Labour
Talking to a shipboard audience last week about the perils of journalism, I warned that the biggest danger of our trade was making assumptions. I had in mind my favourite story from CNN days of the cameraman who dashed to the local airfield where he had been told a light plane awaited him to take
In last week’s Spectator, our man in the know Robin Oakley let us in on the secrets of who he’s backing in the Grand National, and his view on the ‘jump reforms’. With Irish trainer Willie Mullins having blitzed the Cheltenham Festival with no fewer than five winners, I am hoping that his luck continues. I
Nothing hurts quite so much as the ones that get away. Unable to be at Cheltenham’s Festival the day the improving Holywell, one of this column’s Twelve to Follow, was running in the Pertemps Final, I had assumed I would be able to phone in my bets. Alas, where I was I had no access
The first time I met the jockey Andrew Thornton, at a hotel dinner, he had a pair of ladies tights sticking out of his pocket. No, he hadn’t just been interrupted in an amorous encounter in the car park. Nor does he have an eyebrow-raising secret taste in underwear. The tights were part of the
Racing for me is all about hope, although the Irish training wizard Mick O’Toole did once declare, ‘Racing is a game of make-believe. If people didn’t have horses they thought were better than they really were, National Hunt racing would collapse.’ Two weeks ago, on a snowy morning in Stow-on-the-Wold, I was trying to keep
In his days as Foreign Secretary Robin Cook once told me that every politician should have a spell as a racing tipster to teach him humility — he tried it for the Glasgow Herald. I am not sure it worked the full miracle in his case, but racing is a true leveller with triumph and
I don’t just love jumping horses — I love the folk who train them and ride them and those who watch them doing it, too. Open the sports pages on Sunday or Monday and what do you get in the acres of newsprint devoted to football? A scowling Sir Alex Ferguson ranting that Manchester United
Punting at Kempton Park in winter I have one basic rule. Take a long hard look at anything Nicky Henderson is running before you consider backing anything else. His record at the Thameside track is extraordinary. But those who had taken the odds of 3–10 on his Tetlami in the novice chase on Saturday missed
It is all about how you impart bad tidings, I suppose, like the wife who told her husband one night, after the first drink: ‘The good news, darling, is that the airbag definitely works.’ Mrs Oakley and I have not only a grandson and five grand-daughters but also a grand-dog, Myla, who comes to stay
‘The Grand National is a great race,’ one of Britain’s most respected racecourse chiefs told me over lunch the other day, ‘but in 2013 we’ll all be watching it from behind the sofa.’ Aintree’s showpiece remains racing’s biggest attraction, the one event that brings in the non-racing world to have a bet. Eleven million watch
Few experiences in racing are as guaranteed to cheer you up as a visit to Oliver Sherwood’s lovely yard in Upper Lambourn. Trying vainly to match strides with Oliver back and forth across the Mandown schooling grounds on a frosty morning last week, as Leighton Aspell, Sam Jones and stable conditional Tom Garner polished the