Recorded for posterity: Tommo's unfortunate encounter with Bo Derek

The Ultimate Daily, the Racing Post's evening email newsletters for Members' Club Ultimate subscribers, is relaunched this week with a new design and the addition of a new Wednesday email, Paul Kealy's Betting World. This is a free sample of Lee Mottershead's Diary, the regular Monday email. Click here to sign up for Members' Club and receive the Ultimate Daily every evening, select 'Get Ultimate Monthly' and enter code CHELT22 to get your first month for just £9.99.

My dearly beloved pointed out the other day that I looked slightly different.

The barnet is a tad longer, partly because a friend suggested a little thinning on top may have begun, thus causing me to conclude that longer locks might hide any possibility of a bald patch.

The teeth are also a little shinier following a visit to the dental hygienist, who gave me full marks for brushing but raised doubts about my flossing habits. Dental hygienists always do.

The right hand might also have been slightly bruised due to a mild sprain injury incurred during a gym class that went wrong.

He didn't actually notice any of those things, just the phone indentation on the left-hand side of my head.

I've been on the phone an awful lot recently, all in the course of producing large features that will appear once the Cheltenham Festival is done and dusted. Some of the calls have been particularly lengthy – 76 minutes was the record – and all needed transcribing, which in my job can take out big chunks of the day.

However long a call lasts, it takes much longer to turn it into words on a screen. Play, stop, play, stop, rewind, play, stop. The buttons are repeatedly pressed and the laptop keys repeatedly hammered. Pretty much every word spoken by the interviewee gets transcribed because it's only when you've got all the words on the screen that you can begin to work out which ones you'll eventually use and which will be discarded. Those that get binned are often like the pieces of pastry you cut off from a pie before baking. They would have been delicious but sadly there just isn't enough room after crimping.

Some companies offer transcription services. The most recent I tried was via an app that promised to send back your conversations in a matter of minutes. It did, but the conversations they returned bore little similarity to those that actually took place.

In years gone by I've used a company in Australia that employed real people to do the job you wanted to avoid doing yourself. Lest you might think I'm a lazy so-and-so with a (possibly) thinning top, those services were only purchased when I was ghosting the autobiographies of first Richard Hughes and then Derek Thompson.

I like to think someone on the other side of the world appreciated hearing Tommo tell the story of how he discovered that the lady staying in the suite next to his in Dubai's Royal Meridien Hotel was none other than Bo Derek.

He knocked on her door, explained he was her neighbour and wanted to say hello.

"You know what, we've both got something in common. We're both called Derek. You're Bo Derek and I'm Derek Thompson."

Bo shut the door in his face, but I'm sure the anecdote was enjoyed somewhere in Australia by a person who also learned new things about Dickie Davies and the lady who played the role of Sue Ellen in Dallas.

There was nothing about Dickie or Dallas in the voice recordings that caused me to have the latest phone-shaped indentation on the head. Instead, there were six fascinating conversations with professional punters and some tremendous stories about the 1997 bomb scare/Monday Grand National, whose 25th anniversary we'll be marking during the countdown to this year's race.

The astonishing 1997 Grand National has been taking up much of Lee's time recentlyCredit: Abraham Dan

It's therefore good to report that all the transcribing was more than worthwhile.

I really do need a haircut, though.

My stories of the week

There was a rumour doing the rounds at Kempton on Saturday. Jonbon was drifting on Betfair for the Supreme, so he must have been injured or heading to the Ballymore. Neither was true, as Nicky Henderson made clear in my piece from the track, where it was great to see Christian Williams saddle the first and second in the Coral Trophy.

The Cheltenham Festival preview night circuit has started and I got involved for the first time this year at an event held near the track on Thursday evening. When we got to questions from the floor, the first was about the possibility of four days becoming five – and that was the motivation for my latest column, which assesses the pros and cons of a fifth festival afternoon.

I'm a big fan of Venetia Williams and my admiration for one of our leading jumps trainers only increased after reading her top-class interview with Peter Thomas, who I'm pleased to report survived what he makes clear was a pretty hairy journey to her Herefordshire stables.

Read these next . . .

Elliott braced for O'Leary argument as he reveals Gold Cup hope for Conflated

Gordon Elliott: Davy Russell is made of steel – his hunger is unbelievable

'I've done the right thing' – Skelton banking on fresh approach for Cheltenham

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