'It's the big days you really look forward to and having the craic'

Ten or 11 years ago I used to go racing a lot at Wincanton and I drank in a pub called the Plough at Manston, near Sturminster Newton, where some of the locals asked if I wanted to share in a syndicate horse.

The sensible reaction is to run away, but you ask how much it's going to cost and there's no going back. That was how I met Colin Tizzard, and I just caught the bug.

I wanted to get more involved, so Colin told me I ought to have a horse on my own, and he had an unnamed horse which I bought and called Virginia Ash, after a pub I was buying just up the road in Henstridge. He was no star but he won a Kempton bumper and a couple of handicap hurdles at Plumpton, and I was hooked.