Frankly, I’m happy for the rest of tomorrow to gallop by as I prepare for the Eurovision Song Contest on Saturday night. It is a chance for my egalitarian, liberal, inclusive side to shine as I admire the many facets of socio-economic Europe on one gigantic artistic display of … hmm… To some, it’s an…
Free Tips
Irish Grand National and a sunny Bank Holiday
BHA CEO Julie Harrington has issued her Easter statement to tell the faithful that efforts to progress the industry strategy were entering “an important and exciting phase“. However, according to Musselburgh’s boss, Bill Farnsworth, her statement masks a strategy devised with the bookmakers to declutter Saturday afternoons to better promote the premier fixtures – a…
GOOD FRIDAY – JOLLY SATURDAY – HAPPY EASTER
If you’re doing nothing and the weather looks pleasant, and you’ve never seen Tony McCoy up close, or Francesca Cumani, or Mick Fitzgerald or any one of hundreds of famous racing faces, then leap in the car and pole over to the Lambourn Open Day. Francesca to be fair might not be there, but there’s…
The final review of Cheltenham – and today’s racing tips
The executive summary to a review of The Cheltenham NH Festival 2023 – were anyone to ask me for an opinion – would be thus: Brilliant racing, marred by a Customer Experience (CX) that does not encourage further returns. However, the issues surrounding the CX are quite possibly 75% out of the hands of Cheltenham…
Saturday’s TV tips – as if you hadn’t had enough of my profit -bearing fruit!!
Sometimes it’s best to let the facts speak for themselves. Over the Cheltenham Festival, Raceweb recommended 66 bets across various betting types, e.g. from Win and Each Way to Combination Forecasts, Tricasts and Dutching. We lost money on Tuesday and Wednesday, did moderately well on Thursday and made a huge profit on Friday. Our suggestions…
CHELTENHAM DAY 4
We popped into The Tent to see chums and to apologise for The Hon’s picture appearing in the Daily Mail. The place was awash with Not Old People including Young Lochinvar who spent 20 minutes complaining about [a] my tipping [b] my lack of winners compared to his six by end of day 2 [c]…
CHELTENHAM DAY 3
Truth be told, there is not much to report. A supper party of Prawns in a tomato, garlic and chilli sauce, Cottage Pie and peas, Lemon Posset with macerated strawberries, English cheeses, French clarets, a very jolly team of guests and somehow time has flown and as I suspected might happen, I find myself short…
CHELTENHAM DAY 2
We returned from the jolly lunch to find a note from an old friend to say that she had found herself at a loose end and thus watched Cheltenham on the box. She who might weep in Othello for the pitiful Desdemona or for Mimi’s consumption wrote that she had been moved to tears by…
In the eye of the storm before the deluge.
We’re in the eye of Storm Dressdown, the calm epicentre of the surrounding torrent of hot-air and clashing reputations, where we have most of the Cheltenham decs; where we also have a decent idea of what the Festival ground will be (Soft, as I suggested earlier this week) and some small inkling of where our…
A snapshot of our times
What an exhausting week. By way of example and mindful as ever of this Government’s leadership of the nation, I spent yesterday trying to find some Turnips in line with Ms Coffey’s exhortation to embrace the root vegetable. We don’t have many shops besides the Coop and a very nice Butcher in Lambourn. Neither had…
Love The English.
On paper, we were down 9 pts, but with Bangers and Cash a non-runner in the Lucky Last, I backed Castle Robin e/w at 10s for break-even stakes and added the only other trends horse still running, Laskalin, to the ticket, who duly came second for a 65 pts profitable forecast. Sometimes there is a…
Just another brick in the wall
RIP Kit Hesketh-Harvey, an amusing, talented and thoughtful man. Thank heavens that the Welsh Woke Police have got hold of the Delilah issue and rapped it firmly on the head. Thanks to them, we can rest assured that no one will ever sing that song again – live on TV. However in the Six Nations…
Dum di dum di dum di dum…
Once upon a time, a long while ago, I was staying with my cuz in Middle Wallop, where he was with the Army Air Corps, which he would later command. That weekend, he gave a very jolly Sunday drinks party for the locals, which would be followed by a pleasant family lunch. As has often…
Welcome back to Johnny Rotten and a farewell to Hanmer
Sometime in late 1977, I ran a gaff in Camden Lock called Madisons, which ran the full length of the first floor of the Camden Lock courtyard, directly opposite Dingwalls and Le Routier. I converted the old Lock, Stock and Barrell and former barge horse stables into a strange representation of a truck-stop café or…
Please God – a jolly Saturday at Cheltenham
As I write this, there is still every chance that some, none, or all of the racing might be abandoned. If only bad weather could stop some other stuff that passes as entertainment. I’m at Cheltenham tomorrow in a cosy box insha’Allah, rounding off a week where I feel blighted by travelling many miles. I…
Going Cuckoo in Purdah
The trouble with managing this lurgi is the absence of the guiding bark. The Hon is absent having gone to London and then Liverpool for three days, leaving me to my own devices. I had the wit to ensure a sufficiency of life-saving consumables; mince pies, Snorkers, frozen chips, Muffins (of the sort that a…
Racing, Footy and a Freebie!
What a week. The Aga saga, which has moved on to the construction of the Kneesup Kitchen at the Chateau d’If, took a turn for the worse with the installation of the quartz worktops. The kitchen supply company had outsourced the installation to, one assumes, the same people who might typically come around and “do…
Cheltenham November – not Open – Meeting Day 2
I was pulled up by a Cheltenham Grandee today when I exclaimed how much I was looking forward to the first day of The Open. Gently chided, I was reminded this is now called The November meeting – because it is in November and is no longer Open. This sort of rebranding happens all the…
The Handmaid’s tipping sheet
I arrive, as ever, late to the party and so am finally able to say “Lumme. That Margaret Attwood and her Handmaid’s Tale. Bleak? … I should cocoa.” I have no idea why, but it passed us by, and it was only a comment along the lines of, “Crikey, who knew they’d get five seasons…
A billion races, less runners, but it pales beside the multiverse
Between last night and this, I ran into the work of Albanian-born cosmologist Laura Mersini-Houghton, who has a fascinating profile piece in The New Scientist this week and who has received wide coverage for her theories surrounding the existence of a multiverse formed at the time of Big Bang. In essence, she has postulated that…
One last gigantic throw of the dice, before we flatten out.
Tomorrow it starts. The last big meeting, the final hurrah for 2022. The Breeders Cup gets underway on Friday, ends on Saturday and sandwiches The Doncaster finale. Somewhere we also have the Haldon Chase and the beginning of the 2 year-recession possibly accompanied by some nuclear hot kimchi and some glowing Ukrainian wheat. For one…
Another memory for the filing drawer marked “Ultra”
No word, for me, can conjure the beauty of youth, the imperiousness of real skill comfortably worn, the vast grandeur of imagination, quite like hearing ” ‘Orance”. I hear that, and I can see O’Toole, camel mounted, singing in the Jordanian valley “The Man Who Broke The Bank at Monte Carlo” and the echoes coming…
A new exciting national PM Hunt season gets under way
We live in a world where it is increasingly difficult not to have some major cause for unsettling angst. Penury, hypothermia, dehydration, pandemic, nuclear war, infrastructure collapse, Starmer, Truss, SNP and Dementia… and that was just this morning’s list. The latter came into sharp focus this AM when I reached for the mouthwash and placed…
Football not the same as Veganism… who knew?
As you might imagine, I was shocked by the Employment Tribunal judgement delivered in McClung v Doosan Babcock Ltd. Caramba, I hear you cry. Not the Unfair dismissal claim by a Rangers supporter who wasn’t given time off by his Celtic-supporting line manager? The very same, says I. Mr Eddie McClung was employed by Doosan…
Cunning plans heaped upon cunning plans.
The torrid arguments about the future of racing continued apace this week. Various pointless assurances about its future have been uttered, and all of them bear an uncanny resemblance to my promising to raise funds for Widows and Orphans by swimming the Atlantic. It might happen – but it is unlikely. We have also had…
Off to Longchamp via Warmington-on-Sea
As the weekend looms, it’s difficult to know how to divide one’s time. The TV alone will be providing: The Singapore Grand Prix (Sunday 1:00 pm), Saturday and Sunday at Longchamp, the decider in Pakistan between them and us in the T20 (Sunday after the Arc), all the racing as shown below, and finally the…
The Fleche was strong -but is racing’s spirit weak?
The Autumn double arrives with The Cambridgeshire, a race with a history that should reinvigorate the spirit and souls of ALL racing fans as they prepare for the long hibernation. Recently, it is a race that has unmasked Group 1 winners masquerading as handicappers. Chief among the founders of its distinguished history is La Fleche,…
Through a glass darkly.
Since we were last together, it is accurate to say that the world has changed, and the impact of those changes is primarily unseen and unmeasured. My equilibrium has been unsettled by the attritional news flow; Henry Ponsonby, a good friend, avoided an annual racing lunch by suddenly dying. James Delahooke, whom I’ve known for…
A theatrical evening before Day 2 of Donny
I went to The Barn Theatre in Cirencester last night to see Driving Miss Daisy. The Barn is a relatively new theatre whose newness was stalled by Covid, but it has survived and without much scarring. The offerings to date have pleased me four times and irritated me twice, which is better than Chichester Festival…
Maybe the new PM heralds a time of Boom and Bust
I know, I know – I’m supposed to be a mature adult. Long gone is the former International Boulevardier. Instead, there is a shadow. A chap who has probably handed in his Wild Rover ticket, a quiet, unassuming, philosophical figure occasionally seen in the shadowed corners of The Poona Gymkhana Club with a Chota Peg…
Like Meghan, I am blessed
As the world descends into chaos and the End of Days announces itself with a viral outbreak “of concern” in the Argentine, my week finishes with visits to plumbing centres, tile shops and a search online for Oxygen suppliers to help me get me over the onset of the vapours caused by the additional building…
The circus comes to town.
This week’s diary found me pinning a badge saying “I like Milk from Cows” on a small Ukrainian child. As you might imagine, my historical engagement with young children has been plagued by the conflict between my upbringing and the modern social mores. Young Vlad’s rudimentary English and his impeccable good manners prevented him from…
The York Ebor Day 4
An agonisingly slow day in the office – but not at York where the ground simply got faster. No Stradivarius (not as predicted) and no Trueshan (exactly as predicted). I know my astonishing prescience of likely weather outcomes must have you reeling, but that was before we saw Quickthorn, which must surely have staggered us…
York Day Three
A day full of mixed emotions. The exam results bode well for young Theocrates with two A* and an A. Does this get him into the Maths department of his Uni of choice? Of course not – he is white and middle class and the place must go to someone with lesser grades who has…
York Day 1
Thank God the rain has come. Except, of course, that the concrete-baked ground cannot soak it up, so it runs off. That in turn will lead to flash flooding. Never mind, better on than off, as my old Nanny used to say before packing me off to some Deb’s hop, and if it is going…
And so it begins….
There is a lot of pressure this week as we prepare for the builders to arrive and we also move into temporary offices. The Wifi needs some resolution (as in trying to download a photograph in under 30 minutes), but before then, we have to go to Goodwood. I use the phrase “have to” in…
Newmarket July Festival Day 3
A dreadful day at Newmarket for readers of this column where we lost two selections in a horrific on-track accident. Both TRIBAL ART and SUMMER’S KNIGHT suffered terminal injuries in the Bet365 Trophy handicap. I won’t say any more, but I was already shouting at the screen before the accident, at the amount of scrimmaging…
Stand by to fend off all boarders: July Festival Day 2
The Hon. is diseased and I have run out the Yellow Jack to warn the bumboats, tinkers and itinerant matchstick sellers to stay away. I have had to move a number of appointments, and cancel a Sunday lunch that would have had a range of very splendid wines served alongside delicious food. I have changed…
The Newmarket July meeting – how cute.
As I sit at my desk, the summer idyll is only broken by the rolling TV news being broadcast into my office. The 1922 Committee is about to be called together, and at any moment I am expecting a call from No 10 as I become by accident, the last man standing in the Valley…
This next month will prove crucial to the future of racing
I suppose one might describe this past week as better than expected. In cellar terms, not a filthy glugging week, but more a robust cru bourgeois week. A bit of tennis, a drinks party, a soupcon of American cousins, some musical theatre, a brace of jolly (and free) dinners, and a visit from my travelling…
Too Hot for fun
Apart from drinking tea, when the temperature heads this far north, we deploy the electric fan, my last punkah wallah having disappeared back to Wolverhampton to join a train strike. With the tea and the fan, I recommend a trawl through any collection of Rudyard Kipling’s poems, which will remind you instantly of the miserable…
The Aga Can’t.
For a brief and glorious moment, I truly thought I was home free. Arriving back last night to Camp Tamarkan, the temperature was slightly north of melted engine block territory but I brushed it aside knowing that I had less than a week to go before The Aga was switched off and removed. The financial…
Smiles for Day 1 and onto Royal Ascot Day 2
What a marvellous day. I spent the morning in the company of one of the best jockeys of the last quarter of the 20th century John Reid, and his brother Noel, having breakfast and chatting about the day’s racing and various mutual chums in the Vale of the White Horse. Then running slightly late, onto…
Bad Manners, The US Open and Royal Ascot Day 1.
In the midst of all the Ascot preparations, the thinking, the calculations, the decisiveness and confidence, sadly coupled with the loss of all value perceptions and risk management, I managed to scramble home from The Derby crash, by dint of good fortune and the bond of friendship. I cannot recall a more topsy-turvy year when…
York’s Dante Meeting Day 3
Normal service resumed today and I am beginning to scratch the scalp. Certainly, some of the results have been very unexpected, but nonetheless, I am beginning to doubt my ability to handle a computer form book. We are 52½ pts down since January which, it could be argued, still makes it a bloody cheap hobby….
The Dante Meeting Day 1
It wasn’t a bad weekend for results, which started to bring us back towards the sunny uplands, and away from the Slough of Despond. We had four winners on Saturday at 7/1, 15/2, 9/4 and 5/4. We had Max Verstappen win at Miami; entirely and as predicted because of Red Bull’s power rather than Ferrari’s…
Chester May Meeting Day 1
Many years ago, Brough Scott, the late great Tony Fairbairn and I went to see Woodrow Wyatt the late and not very great chairman of The Tote. The meeting was to discuss one of my rarely brilliant ideas, which I had discussed with Brough and Tony. We had agreed on a partnership in principle but…
1000 Guineas
The Almost God of Thirsk smiled briefly in our collective direction when I wrote, DUBAI LOVE is getting first-time cheekpieces from S Bin S and while he’s a perfectly nice horse the issue is his ability rather than his focus. PISANELLO’s Beverley victory LTO came in spite of major traffic problems in the last furlong…
Punchestown Day 4
This looks like a day for favourites – or certainly top of the market players. I have suggested doing an accumulator at the bottom of the page, but I quite like the look of the last race, where I can see surprises being sprung.
The Guineas Meeting Day 1
It isn’t every day that we pull a 25/1 winner out of the hat, but that is what we did in the Bumper yesterday at Punchestown. We also had several decent e/w shots and at one time I thought we were in with a shout of taking the La Touche – but like so much…