The 7-1 shot that no man would ever want to see come in

Punters like 7-1 shots. It is an excellent each-way price, covering your stake with a small profit if placed. As a betting shop settler, when humans rather than machines performed that task, I knew I would be busy if a 7-1 shot won or was placed.

For men, though, 7-1 is also the likelihood of being diagnosed with prostate cancer. It's just 4-1 for black men and men with a family history of the illness.

When a blood test indicated to my GP that I may have prostate cancer, he sent me for investigations. I was plunged into a series of procedures, proddings and probings, culminating in being told that I did have it by a quick-thinking nurse who intervened when my consultant was continuously sidetracked by intrusive phone calls.

Look around the racing world and I'm in good company.

David Ashforth and I are both members of a band of racing enthusiasts, the Sedgefielders, who gathered at that Durham course to mark fellow racing writer Sean Magee's completion of his attendance at every racecourse in the UK. Several Sedgefielders have had prostate cancer, including David.

I can't claim to know JP McManus so well, having had just one brief interaction with the legendary owner and punter. During my 40-plus years working for William Hill, mostly as company spokesperson, I attended the annual Horserace Writers awards lunch at a posh London hotel, where JP and I found ourselves together at the bar, trying to attract the barman's attention. JP ordered two glasses of bottled water. "Sorry, sir, we don't have any." Without missing a beat, JP shot back: "Two large scotches, please." I looked at him and nodded with respect. He nodded back.

JP is another man who has suffered with this illness, about which I knew little when diagnosed other than that high-profile sufferers seemed to admit to having had it only after successful treatment.

I wanted to use my experiences as an opportunity to write about what it is like to go through the illness and the result is my new book PROSTrATE CANCER, so named because I often heard fellow patients mispronouncing the name of the disease.

It would be so useful if a racecourse decided to stage a prostate cancer awareness meeting, but my main message is that all middle-aged, or older, men must ask their GP to help them get checked out, in order to be able to do what all punters so often achieve effortlessly – failing to land a 7-1 shot.

Graham Sharpe is the author of PROSTrATE CANCER: The Misunderstood Male Killer, out on Friday from Oldcastle Books

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