‘It’s frustrating at times, but this sport has given us a few fun days’

I caught the racing bug relatively late in life, while in my third year at Edinburgh University.

I’m not sure how happy my mother was when, having gained my degree, I went straight down to Lambourn to start as a groom for Nicky Henderson, although my parents had intermittently been involved in the racing world.

My father didn’t last the course at Ampleforth College after being repeatedly warned for acting as a bookmaker for the other boys, and also absconding to the races fairly regularly, while my mother is a keen rider, a longstanding MFH of the West Percy Hunt and still follows the pack regularly today. She would be the more sympathetic of the two to the horse – Dad, a remarkably successful businessman, is more of a results man!