Why my relationship with jump racing now reminds me of Wile E Coyote and the Road Runner

Pick your favourite appalling calamity that befalls a villain in the Looney Tunes cartoons. I mean the most grisly, spectacular disaster that leaves them blinking, charred, with all their hair blown backwards. That's what my betting's been like since the new year.

There was the Grand National where I spent months accumulating interests in what turned out to be seven runners, the best of which finished seventh. That was Wile E Coyote trying to shoot dynamite at the Road Runner but contriving to fire only the bow, leaving himself with the explosive-laden arrow.

Being cunning, I realised Willie Mullins would fare pretty well at Cheltenham and so combined his shorties in a handful of trebles and accas, all of which, as it turned out, contained either El Fabiolo, Dinoblue or Mystical Power. That was Yosemite Sam shoving Bugs Bunny out of the way and showing him how the piano should be played, having forgotten he'd loaded it with TNT.