Delighted to be back, bless you

By Ian Carnaby

Even those of us wearisomely familiar with the past find it still managing to play tricks on us.

It says in the book that Erhaab won the Derby in 1994 and I am happy enough with that because it does indeed seem fifteen years ago. Sitting outside the Venice (long since gone) in Great Titchfield Street, wandering over to the Crown and Sceptre, known locally as the Hat ‘N Stick, where John McCarthy was headed (‘have a pint ready for me on the bar’) when he was abducted in Beirut in 1986, watching on one of the first big pub screens as Willie Carson met all the trouble going but shouted for room and got it, ambling back over to the Venice again to watch the world go by - yes, I’d say 15 years is about right.

On the other hand, I can’t believe it was only a few months later that Stephen Fry walked out of Cell Mates at the Albery Theatre. When you watch Fry now - and I instantly admit a certain bias here, because ten minutes of him is more than enough for me, and on QI two is plenty - you realise how he must have come to terms with this betrayal and carried on, as avuncular and clever and ‘bless you’ as before.

Cell Mates was about the spy George Blake and his unlikely yet enduring friendship with Irishman Sean Bourke, played by Rik Mayall. The playwright Simon Gray, gone now, spent about five years of his life writing Cell Mates and seeing it reach the West End, where it played to packed houses, briefly, before Fry walked out. It was an unfavourable review in the Financial Times - ‘the lumpen, superior “act” that bored an audience every time he opened his mouth’, that sent Fry on his way to Bruges (not Wolverhampton or Kansas) and ended with the play being taken off soon afterwards.

Whatever Fry achieved from then on, to me he would always be the man who quit Cell Mates. It might be stretching a point to make comparisons with Kieren Fallon, but let’s just say the unsavoury incidents stay with me longer than the heroics. I brace myself for Fallon’s return to the fray, the sea of microphones, the anonymous shouts of approval. ‘Good to have you back, Kieren!’ someone will cry, and Kieren will smile his enigmatic, diamond-hard smile, like a man who’s bought and sold the world twice and could easily arrange something for you, too.

Anyway, Erhaab seems about right and El Gran Senor’s second at Epsom ten years before that must be pretty close to the mark as well. I managed to interview Vincent O’Brien for BBC Radio after the 2000 Guineas. It was so long ago that people were still ‘watching’ or ‘looking on’, not ‘watching on’ as they do now.

Compare and contrast, as the exam papers used to say

It’s doubtful whether form was analysed as closely 25 years ago as it is now but I think breeding probably was. Apart from acknowledged experts like Tony Morris in the Sporting Life, you’d have Chris Hawkins in the Guardian proffering his ‘formula’ for possible Derby winners. I apologise for not remembering this word for word, but there were certain stamina requirements - the sire needed to have won over a mile and a quarter at least and the dam over a mile, or to have produced something successful over that trip.

Compare and contrast, as the old exam papers used to say. If you fancy Rainbow View for the Oaks she coasts through, being by Dynaformer out of No Matter What, who not only won over a mile in France but produced the American Grade Three mile and a half winner Winter View.

On the other hand, if you like Rip Van Winkle in the Derby because you believe Johnny Murtagh will be on board - very risky indeed, given recent results at Chester and York - you are without a prayer. Galileo’s influence will not make up for the fact that the dam Looking Back, quite apart from being by top sprinter Stravinsky, was a five-furlong horse in Italy herself. Rules are made to be broken but not in this instance, perhaps.

If I were going to be influenced by anything in the ante-post market ten days before the great race, it would be Ladbrokes’ apparent confidence that 2000 Guineas winner Sea The Stars, no bigger than 9/4, will see off the Ballydoyle contingent. Not that John Oxx’s runner would have satisfied Hawkins, of course. Not only was his sire Cape Cross a miler but the stamina he passes on levels out at around 8.5 furlongs. So you’re relying on staying power coming from the dam, Arc winner Urban Sea, which may work on fast ground but possibly not on soft.

At least it can all be analysed. With El Gran Senor, people were in the dark to a degree because his dam, Sex Appeal, never raced. Pat Eddery famously held on to O’Brien’s pride and joy until the last possible moment at Epsom, allowing Christy Roche a sustained challenge on the hard-ridden Secreto, who got up.

“Do you miss me?” Lester is supposed to have murmured to Vincent afterwards. Pat kept his own counsel and didn’t read or listen to many of the reports afterwards, which was probably just as well. Mind you, they say Bruges is very nice at this time of year.