‘I’ve a nice lead but I wouldn’t say I’m relaxed. I don’t want to miss a winner’

An unsolicited text message from Richard Johnson arrives just before noon. The champion jockey is apologising as heavy traffic has delayed his journey to Southwell and therefore also our planned meeting. It's a little thing to have done but plenty of others would not have done it.

Johnson, of course, is famously polite. It has been repeated countless times, including by this writer, who in previous interviews quoted Dinah Nicholson saying her late husband David's protege had been "the perfect child" and also Jackie, an assistant in a Ludlow petrol station, who described the shop's regular visitor as "always very polite" and "a happy, smiley person".

Therein lies the problem when one sits down to talk with Johnson, which on this occasion happens in one of Southwell's hospitality boxes on a grey Tuesday.