I have a nagging doubt after my mother’s warning

IT IS not so much that I never win on the Grand National. It is more the fact that my horse is never mentioned. I pick the nag each year at random and wait in vain for the commentator to make mention. Often the entire race takes place without a single reference to the Mortimer equine. Did it turn up for the race, I wonder?

- Peter Mortimer

This year my next door neighbour Pauline picked the winner. She has just booked a one-year luxury cruise on the proceeds, first-class cabin and as much alcohol as she wants to drink. She leaves on Wednesday.

All this is fabrication, of course, though she did win a few bob. My mother told me at an early age that she had never come across a poor bookie and that this fact should be a lesson for me.

My mother was Irish and it struck me watching the race, the build-up and the aftermath that almost everyone involved seemed to be Irish too; trainers, jockeys, owners. No one interviewed the horses, but my bet was that they'd all have a Dublin accent.

Like me, and around 95% of the population, the thought of betting on a horse never crosses my mind outside this one day of the year.

So the occasion does give me an opportunity to make a rare visit to a bookies, always aware of my mother’s comment, which she often repeated, that you never saw a cash-strapped turf accountant.