'He was a fascinating man to work for, and loved a slow horse'

I was his assistant for eight years, just about all through the 1990s, and he really was a fascinating man to work for. He was very straightforward with me, life was pretty simple - when I did something wrong I got a bollocking, when I did something right, which was not very often, he just said nothing.

These days I probably don't use what he taught me enough, really, although I do stick to his principle of always looking after the horse first, putting its best interests to the fore whatever the other circumstances, and explaining matters to the owner afterwards.

In my first year with a licence I had a good four-year-old called Behrajan, who won three races before Cheltenham, but he impressed upon me not to run it in what he called that dreadful Triumph Hurdle. Why ruin it, he said. So Behrajan ran in the Supreme Novices' instead.