Humphrey Bogart once complained that the trouble with the world was that ‘everybody in it is three drinks behind’. He would have liked the three Irishmen ahead of me on the track to Esher station after Saturday’s Betfred Gold Cup meeting ended the 2004–5 jumping season. ‘Jasus, it was cramped in there, never seen such
For the Beach Boys it was California Girls who were sans pareil. For Chas and Dave it was the Girls of London Town. But this column is dedicated to the girls of Merseyside. On Grand National Day at Aintree, it was wet and windy. Umbrellas turned inside out, racecards disintegrated to sodden pulp, rain seeped
For me there was never a comedian to match Ireland’s Dave Allen, perched on his stool fastidiously flicking imaginary cigarette ash off his suit, drawing out a story with a sip of whisky and flaying with the laughter he provoked all those who set themselves in authority over us, from mothers superior to prime ministers.
Ginger Rogers did everything that Fred Astaire did, a show-biz historian once pointed out. Only she did it backwards. The feminists do have a point, and while women riders still don’t get a fair deal in British racing, Kempton on Saturday provided yet another reminder of how well women trainers take their opportunities. My hope
Genes, it seems, can survive a period of hell-raising. ‘I know that name. What else has he got?’ I heard a racegoer inquire of his companion at Kempton on Saturday, after Mark Rimell had trained Crossbow Creek to win the big race of the day, the Totesport Lanzarote Hurdle. The answer is: ‘For the moment,
The Soviets had sent a dog into space before they sent Yuri Gagarin. When the astronaut Gagarin, after his feat, came to London, he was mobbed by admiring crowds, an adulation which, at the height of the Cold War, alarmed some of Harold Macmillan’s ministers. It took the old maestro himself to put things into
It didn’t start well at Lingfield on Saturday. I discovered too late that on my walk across the field from the station I had been dribbling £1 coins, carefully saved for Mrs Oakley’s car-parking fund, through a hole in my pocket. And if the nice Chinese lady who mends my pockets smiles sweetly and says