A mad professor with an artist's touch - the genius of Carberry

All right, it might not be the day the music died but, with the announcement that Paul Carberry has been forced to quit the saddle, a little of the melody has vanished from the orchestra. The virtuoso's seat is empty; Elvis has left the building.

Jockeys are effective in a number of ways. Some are pushers, some are coaxers, some wear a velvet glove over the iron fist and some simply get ferrous when the occasion demands it. Carberry was none of these, although he could wear those clothes if he needed to. No, Carberry was an insinuator, a suggester, a jockey who didn't so much ask his horses to do things as merely raise an eyebrow at them and see what happened.

If he was a painter and decorator instead of a jockey, he'd turn up one morning with a load of paint and some brushes and sit in your kitchen and roll a cigarette. After the seventh cigarette you'd politely wonder aloud whether he was going to get on with it; you'd pop out to the bin to empty his ashtray and by the time you came back he'd have finished the walls and ceiling and be cleaning his brushes with a smile on his face. How did he do it? Don't ask – it just got done. But Carberry wasn't a painter and decorator, he was an artist.