'I'm still unmarried - perhaps that's why I'm still making an effort'

This article, exclusive to Members' Club Ultimate subscribers, was originally written in February as part of our countdown to the Cheltenham Festival as Racing Writer of the Year Peter Thomas meets a trainer who would go on to enjoy success at Prestbury Park

There have been mercifully few occasions when I've been desperate to extricate myself from an interview, but this was one of them, although I hasten to add that Venetia Williams was in no way to blame.

I'd worked out quite quickly from the magnets on her wine-free fridge – the ones reading "I dress to kill, I cook the same way" – that I wasn't going to be treated to a tasty supper over a convivial glass or two, but what worried me far more was that the final few miles of the journey to Aramstone stables had, even in the clear light of day, been trepidatious, and the prospect of retracing those perilous steps at dusk was becoming ever more unnerving.