'I'm a shoeaholic. I have more shoes than the horses in the yard'

What advice would you give your ten-year-old self?
Be honest, work hard and treat everyone the way you'd like them to treat you. Enjoy life as much as you can, as you go from being the young lad to being the auld lad very quickly. And always remember you'll be millions of years dead.

What is your earliest racing memory?
Going to Fairyhouse on Easter Monday with Mum and Dad and the rest of the family. We would park in a field up at Ballyhack, which was just about as far away from the enclosures as you could get, but there would always be a couple of bookmakers there. We would climb up on the bank and cheer like lunatics as the horses went by. I backed my first winner there, I had one shilling on Last Link when she won the National.

When did you first know you’d become a trainer and why?
I'd never really thought about it. I came home from school when I was 16 to run the family farm as my father was very ill. A couple of years later Mick Condra and I bought a horse called Tu Va at Goffs for 100 guineas. He wasn't great but I managed to win races with him on the Flat and over hurdles and even won a race on him myself. It all started from there.