Richard Pitman: ‘People have spent 50 years telling me I’m an idiot - I was an idiot, but not for the reasons they think’

Every time I watch and rewatch the video of the 1973 Grand National, I find myself entering a blissful parallel universe in which the race ends differently.

Everything goes exactly as it did back then, when I watched it, as a transfixed 11-year-old, perched excitedly on the edge of the sofa in our living room, but then Crisp jumps the last well clear of his field, and my inner being decides that the final two furlongs need to diverge significantly from the reality of the form book.

Remember, this was before Red Rum was a legend, so I was transfixed solely by the sight of the giant Australian beast, practically black, very handsome, leaping the 30 fences in a fashion I had never seen.