Showman Stoute steals the limelight from the year's greatest entertainers

It takes a special man to upstage Frankie Dettori and Enable on the big occasion and a brave man even to try, but Sir Michael Stoute pulled it off at the Cartier Awards on Tuesday night in the style of an entertainer born to the spotlight.

This is the same Sir Michael Stoute, you understand, who has long nurtured a reputation for elusivity on the racecourse, sidestepping reporters like an over-sized fly-half, revealing himself as rarely and fleetingly as the yeti, yet now transformed, either by the warmth of public affection or by good claret, into a consummate showman.

Such was the bonhomie engulfing the Dorchester ballroom that by the time he uncompromisingly seized the microphone from our host, ITV’s very own showman Ed Chamberlin, it would have been no surprise to see the master of Freemason Lodge break into song and croon his gratitude for the Cartier Award of Merit to a starstruck crowd.