Your Humble Servant: from unruly to equine au pair

His first chapter was all so inconspicuous, a view of the world that probably comprised of a straw-lined floor in a rural corner of Tipperary. March 6, 1991, a bay colt by Lafontaine, a sire yet to be endorsed by the Grand National and Cheltenham Festival winners he'd one day produce. Lafontaine was unknown, with a suspicious USA after his name. The colt he'd sired was cut from a similarly inauspicious cloth, albeit with the more familiar IRE suffix. IRE, like OBE or MBE.

His life as a citizen of the Emerald Isle was to be short-lived, however; he became a migrant. A pony-like yearling shipped by ferry to an English bloodstock sale, his mahogany bay figure was soon inhabiting the other side of the Irish Sea. In 1992, Bill Clinton was elected President of the United States, Princess Diana retracted her commitment to Prince Charles, and the undersized son of Lafontaine arrived in north Staffordshire. The melodic Irish accents he'd become accustomed to were replaced by a peculiar Potteries dialect, but this was home now, this was where it would all begin.

First, he needed a name. The village in which he now resided had once been home to an infamous old war hero, armed with embellished tales of his military tribulations. Invariably the protagonist, his introduction to the plot would begin with a customary 'and along comes Your Humble Servant . . . ' To pay a fitting tribute to the man and his stories told with flagrant disregard for Received Pronunciation, the horse became 'Yer 'Umble'. And humble he seemed, he lived with such little urgency that his leisurely meandering around the yard at the end of a slack lead rope brought about the well-earned stable name – Sluggy.