'I've been prepared to put my balls on the line. Sometimes things have worked out. Sometimes they haven't'

As Karl Burke completes the telling of yet another gripping story, any one of which could serve as the plotline to a primetime television drama, he quite reasonably observes it is little wonder his head is rather lacking in hair.

Fortuitously, his recent confrontation with cancer and chemotherapy did not result in further thinning on top. That is just as well, given the many traumatic episodes previously encountered, endured but survived by the former journeyman jump jockey who now stands indisputably as the north's number one Flat trainer. 

There was the drama of his sudden arrest by the City of London Police, the one-year BHA ban that eventually followed and then, worse and more frightening than either of those, the disastrous decision that led to his being pursued by loan sharks with very big teeth. That last chapter in Burke's life threatened to leave him homeless, penniless and robbed of a career that since those travails has blossomed magnificently. It has been a rollercoaster ride of extreme proportions.