Imprudent gallantries

Before I go off on one of the usual tangents, I ought to start on a stable-related topic. One thing I'd meant to point out in relation to the stable's recent mini-rash of success is that all three horses who have saluted the judge this autumn - Take Me There, Kadouchski and To Be Or Not To Be - are horses who have benefited from what the late Leslie Harrison once described as "the genius of Carol Whitwood". In fact, I'd go so far as to say that none of them would have won without Carol's attentions, and - while Carol knows that I know that - I feel it wouldn't go amiss to record my appreciation on this blog. Not that she's going to read it, of course, but it makes me feel better to know that I'm not taking for granted our good fortune in being able to call upon the skills of the best - and nicest - 'back-person' in the country.

I can now begin to stray from the point, but I'll remain, for the present anyway, on a racing-related topic. Emma and I were lucky enough to attend the Derby Awards luncheon on Monday, which is always a great event. The prize-giving ceremony is always highly entertaining. We were on the President's table (that being the President of the Horse Race Writers' and Photographers' Association, Will Hayler) on which I found myself drawn next to well-known identity Dave Nevison, which was quite a brahma. Anyone who has read either of his books, or excerpts from them in the Racing Post, will know that Dave is reknowned for his accomplishments in the fields of "drinking, punting and shagging", so I suppose it was only natural that I should find myself seated next to him. Apart from enabling me to enjoy Dave's company for a couple of hours, this had the bonus of enabling to meet, albeit briefly, one of my TV heroes, Nathaniel Parker (ie Inspector Lynley) because he came over to have a chat with Dave at one point. I was really, really pleased by this, because Emma and I are big Lynley fans; and even bigger Morse fans and, of course, the young Nathaniel did make an appearance in an early Morse (the cricket one), of which fact I am very aware having watched every Morse episode at least once and most two or more times. (Sad, but true). As I had, unbelievably but I suppose inevitably, cocked up the taping of the long-awaited first installment of 'Wallander' on the BBC the previous evening, this sort of made up, in my mind at least, for that blunder.

Once lunch was over we were on to the awards and the speeches, and these were really entertaining as usual. Not all the awards were easy to predict, and I don't know that I'd have picked Ruby Walsh as National Hunt Jockey Of The Year, but you certainly couldn't have quibbled with that result. And it produced the brahma of having it collected by his father, introduced as "his Father Ted", which will mean that Ted Walsh will henceforth always be the late, great Dermot Morgan in my eyes; and I particularly enjoyed seeing Father Ted hold the award as if it were a 'Golden Cleric'. It was easy to predict that Paul Nicholls would be National Hunt Trainer Of The Year. For mine, any one of the four nominees for Flat Jockey Of The Year (Johnny Murtagh, Ryan Moore, Richard Hughes and Hayley Turner) could have collected that one (it was Murtagh), while I'd only have made the winner of Flat Trainer Of The Year (Aidan O'Brien) third favourite behind Richard Hannon (who has surely broken a world record for two-year-old races won in a year, and has handled Paco Boy superbly) and Jim Bolger. Harry Findlay's speech (on behalf of his mother) after the collection of the Owner Of The Year trophy was astonishingly good, while one of the funniest moments came when the President prepared to announce the identity (which we already knew, because the programme told us that Colin MacKenzie had won it) of the winner of the President's Award: Will started by saying that he had decided to give it to "the most honourable, quick-thinking and hard-working man I know", at which point the room was split by the sound of "YEESSSSS!!!" as someone unseen, who definitely wasn't Colin MacKenzie, punched the air in elation on the other side of the room, seemingly having taken this citation as an indication that he was about to be heading to the stage to receive recognition for his exemplary qualities! Another moment which brought a smile to my face came when former Essex and England cricketer Ronnie Irani prepared to hand out one of the awards. We'd just waded through a very acceptable lunch, which had definitely fitted Clive James' description of aeroplane food ("as easy to eat as to send back untouched") and during which I'd left a clean plate, so I was very amused to hear Ronnie describe the lunch as "the best meal I've eaten below 10,000 feet for quite some time"!

The final two awards were the in-house pair of Broadcaster Of The Year and Journalist Of The Year. One would expect James Willoughby to be on the short-list for both of these, but he was actually in the final four only for the latter, and that he didn't win. He's never won it and I'd say that he'd be a moral to win it next year, but even so there can be no dispute that the right man won it this year. The only surprise was that the excellent David Ashforth had never won it while working for the Racing Post (he won it in 1996 when a Sporting Life employee) but happily that omission was put right this year as he received his well-deserved reward for a decade-plus of informative and highly entertaining Racing Post features and reports, during which he has earned the universal esteem of his fellow journalists and racing professionals alike, as the standing ovation which he received more than confirmed. Broadcaster Of The Year produced another deserving winner, albeit a more surprising one. Whereas one would have made David favourite in advance, Nick Luck would probably have been priced up at longer odds for two very good reasons: he won it last year, and he was the ceremony's compere. I don't think he was expecting to win it, but win it he did, and the spontaneity of his acceptance speech - not that one would ever find such an accomplished broadcaster completely unprepared for anything - made it particularly good. He even managed disarmingly to include the description of himself, which apparently had recently appeared on some Chatroom Forum, as "part Fagin and part Quentin Crisp" in what was as good an acceptance speech as one would expect.

We've subsequently listened to more speeches, as last night Emma and I were lucky enough to be invited to an evening in the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge, courtesy of Taylor Vinter Solicitors and Weatherbys Bank, which revolved around a talk on the paintings and life of George Stubbs. This contained a true brahma. We were told of the patronage which Stubbs received around the 1770s and 1780s from the Earl Of Rockingham, the man responsible for the construction of the first grandstand on the Knavesmire - hence his commemoration in the running of the Rockingham Stakes (Listed) at the York October Meeting - and the owner of Stubbs' famous subject Whistlejacket. Anyway, Rockingham, for all that he was a benefactor to Stubbs and to racing, was, by all accounts, "not a superior person" who "had suffered severely from some imprudent gallantries in his youth". The mind boggles! It's slightly hard to work out exactly what this strange sentence was trying to describe, but I think we'd had the pleasure of stumbling upon a quaint euphemism for what Richard Sims would describe as "committing low acts".