'It just took off with Willie - now the dream is Appreciate It winning the Gold Cup'

The dream team: Michael Masterson pictured with Paul Townend and Willie Mullins after Champ Kiely won at Galway last yearCredit: Patrick McCann (racingpost.com/photos)

Jenny the Donkey has emerged unexpectedly as a bit of a game changer. Ever since Achill Island was first populated 4,000 years ago, it has mostly been associated with magical scenery, scary cliffs, shoals of basking sharks off Keem Bay, warm and welcoming people and, alas too often, industrial levels of emigration. Never, until now, has the island ever been connected with any animal that even remotely resembled a horse.

And yet there she is, Jenny the miniature Donkey, small of stature but looming large on silver screens in the locally filmed and multiple Oscar-nominated Irish film The Banshees of Inisherin, tailing Colin Farrell as he rambles through the windswept, barren landscape and on down to the pub to nurse a couple of puzzled pints while he tries to figure out why Brendan Gleeson doesn’t want to be his friend anymore.