Paul Hanagan: 'I went into yards when I got the Hamdan job and could tell right away they didn't want me'

He made his name as a down-to-earth northern lad who found himself a happy northern niche, rode a massive number of northern winners, became only the third northern jockey to win the championship in more than a century and the only one ever to win it twice. Northern is the recurring theme, in case you hadn't noticed.

He still feels uneasy when he crosses the Trent and has waking nightmares about having to live in London. He's a Warrington lad, an adopted son of North Yorkshire, and with Richard Fahey in Malton he formed a lasting alliance that dominated in the north and raided the south when the pickings were at their richest.

Odd, then, that when Paul Hanagan is asked to name the single proudest achievement in his 26-year riding career, he plumps not for an Ayr Gold Cup on Fonthill Road or a Northumberland Plate with Mirjan, not for his first Group 1 on Fahey's Wootton Bassett in Paris or that smash-and-grab in the July Cup with Mayson, but for the simple act of stepping gingerly out of his natural environment and taking on the most daunting challenge of his life.