It's not name dropping, but not many people can say, like me, that they spent the day with the likes of Francis Bacon or that boring drunk Dylan Thomas. You don't forget things like that.

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

What a pity people don't take as much trouble with their own breeding as intelligent racehorse owners do. But then I suppose it is bordering on fascism to think like that.

I was under the care of a couple of medical students who couldn't diagnose a decapitation.

Oh, to me not drinking is like being dead, almost. I sit here taking endless journeys down memory lane. It gets boring.

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.

I don't remember ever being full of dislike and hatred for people, like some kids I've come across now.