Nicky may have failed in the family firm but he sure has control of the farm

Nicky Henderson’s father Johnny, of Grand Annual fame, was a blueblood financier who made plenty of greenbacks in the loftier zones of the old City in the days when lunch was lunch and your word your bond.

He saved Cheltenham for you and I when putting a team together to buy the course in 1963 for £240,000 – almost exactly the cost of a four-day badge this week.

Hopes were high young Nicky would tread a similar path. But hopes were wildly misplaced as our hero’s incarnation in the boardrooms of the lofty did not last long.