Cheltenham is a good thing you can never get enough of

Back in the 1960s there was a popular television police drama called No Hiding Place, and the title serves to describe exactly where punters, trainers, jockeys and owners stand with the festival exactly a month away.

Over the next four weeks it will be the horses themselves who will find the screw turned on them as trainers try to put that extra edge on them for the big day. But have the four days become a bit of a monster?

The question needs asking in response to legitimate concerns raised in these pages by the estimable Evan Williams and Seamus Mullins, a man whose swift entry at the Golden Gates is guaranteed by his loyalty in putting up the world’s oldest man, Andrew Thornton, on his horses for donkey’s years.