The more necessary it becomes to stop drinking, the more impossible it becomes to stop.

It's one thing to ask your bank manager for an overdraft to buy 500 begonias for the borders in Haslemere, but quite another to seek financial succour to avail oneself of the 5-2 they're offering on lie de Bourbon for the St Leger.

They smoke cigarettes professionally. The smoke is inhaled very sharply and the teeth are bared.Then the head turns to give you a profile and the smoke is exhaled slowly and deliberately and the grey jet stream becomes a beautiful blue cloud of smoke.What are they trying to tell us?

I have stood in a bar in Lambourn and been offered, in the space of five minutes, a poached salmon, a leg of a horse, a free trip to Chantilly, marriage, a large unsolicited loan, ten tips for a ten-horse race, two second-hand cars, a fight, and the copyright to a dying jockey's life story.

In most betting shops you will see three windows marked 'Bet Here', but only one window with the legend 'Pay Out'.

When I was a boy, I naively thought that this thing called happiness would be something I would wake up to find every day once I could smoke, drink and fornicate.

One way to stop a runaway horse is to bet on him.