'I was happy being a farrier and part-time trainer - but the horses kept coming'

We are penning the latest couple of chapters to the Flooring Porter fairytale at the kitchen table of his Balrath home in County Meath when Gavin Cromwell ponders the part luck has played in the story.

"You make your own luck in life, but there is such a thing as actual luck," he says in that languid style of his.

And, yes, it is tempting to wonder – in a parallel universe where there was no such thing as Jer's Girl – what Cromwell might have been up to on Thursday night last week; probably not crowd-surfing across the lobby of the Holiday Inn in the heart of Cheltenham town with a boisterous syndicate beneath him, that's for sure. More about those beneath him in a moment.