Philip Hobbs: 'I never considered retiring - people put two and two together and got the wrong end of the stick'

The nice guy image enjoyed by Philip Hobbs might not be entirely accurate.

"We used to have these two ponies we raced around the fields, jumping straw bales," the trainer's younger brother Peter says. "He pushed me through one once and I turned arse over tit – and I would have only been about ten."

Hobbs's days as a rough-riding enforcer seem an age ago as he looks every inch the successful sixtysomething Somerset trainer in his spacious but welcoming kitchen.