Mick and David Easterby: 'He says he's less interested - but you just wait!'

It's a sunny summer's morning in Sheriff Hutton and Mick Easterby is standing by the side of the uphill gallop at New House Farm, drinking in the fresh North Yorkshire air and the unmistakable whiff of a speedy two-year-old.

Nothing remarkable about that, you might think. It's a sentence that could have been written a thousand times over during his long and colourful working life, but today is different. Mick, you see, has had Covid and it knocked him bandy, so to be back at work is a godsend to the great man; in fact, to be still above ground is something of a blessing, and he's not about to pretend otherwise.

"If I hadn't had my two jabs, I wouldn't be here now," he declares with a decided absence of survivor's guilt. "I'd either be up there or down there." He points to the heavens and he points groundwards, in the broad direction of the fiery furnace, inviting the rest of us to make up our own minds. The early even-money about 'downstairs' is quickly snapped up and 'upstairs' is alarmingly on the drift as the incorrigible veteran trainer retires to the 4x4 for a little air-conditioning.