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.

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 have been commissioned to write an autobiography and I would be grateful to any of your readers who could tell me what I was doing between 1960 and 1974.

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

A lot of girls annoy me who go to university - one girl told me she was going to Oxford because it was something to do between leaving school and getting married. And I've got to pay for that being an income tax payer.

The only reason I would have liked to have gone to university is because I like cricket. Not a very good reason to want to go, but as good as any, I suppose.

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.