Two runners and no viewers adds up to a perfect opportunity for the purist

They're funny people, purists. Proud yet irritating outliers from popular culture, they'll dine on locally sourced artichokes in a vinaigrette of impeccable provenance, when all the time the suspicion is that they'd like nothing better than to get their snouts into a communal bucket of fried chicken.

They like jazz in a horn-rimmed-glasses-and-beret kind of way and their idea of a good night out is a foreign language film at an arthouse cinema followed by a botched attempt at tantric sex.

I know all this because I have purist tendencies of my own. I pride myself on not being able to answer the popular culture questions on Tipping Point (the guilty quiz-based pleasure of the work-from-home hack) and I spit in the eye of Britain's Got Talent, but even I struggle to see the appeal of a two-runner novice chase.