A Farewell to Arms, to the Ladies and Gents and to the Festival.
This time last week, the developed world was either preparing itself to go to, punt on, work at, host lunch parties for, or give hospitality at Cheltenham.
I say developed world, I mean, of course, sane and sensible people who don’t mind looking exactly the same as everyone else - a bastion of middle-class Tweed, a portcuillis of brown and coloured velevet collars - unless of course you’re Richy Rich, in which case you get your own wo/man in Harris, to dye and weave you something in Purple, that would grace a Rei Momo at a Rio Carnival. The fact that he won the Gold Cup in that suit merely reminds one that you can do whatever you like when you have the money and the chutzpah!
We had handbags at dawn down at the start, followed by meaningful and long-lasting (about two minutes) platidunous handshakes in the Weighing Room doorway, between Declan and Nico, brokered by Davy Russell, who I wouldn’t want to cross. But as one commentator wondered, where was the Great Mediator when Robbie Dunne was giving Bryony Frost a hard time?
Besides, the boys both had a point - the handbags only came out because of the appalling catalogue of false starts. With respect to all concerned, basic physics tells you that you cannot start a race on a bend. In order to avoid argy-bargy, that means that you either increase the yardage, shorten it, move the finish line, or, and here’s a thought, you numptys - because you are already doing it elsewhere on the course - move the outer running rail to the side and then replace it before they come back within an HSE-enabled 3½ mins.
Perhaps instead of holding another inquiry, the powers that be could revisit their 2025 inquiry into that year’s false starts; you must remember it surely, it was called “Nothing To See Here Guv v.462.”
What else? The food in the main tents was apparently lousy. 20% of the Ladies’ Loos were constantly blocked by the drunken, collapsed bodies of girls who had no one to tell them they were behaving appallingly, unwisely, and dangerously. A man in the Daily Mail (so it must be true) boasted of making £20k pd from selling Bolivian Marching - more than he normally makes at Glasto! Of course he does. The Car Parks are all being changed… what else to worry about?
There’s the rub. We’re forgetting what we just saw… either in one’s cocoon at home with chums, or in the members’ tent, or up in The Cotswold Club, or in the Guinness stand. No, I don’t just mean winning the Gold Cup, Champion Hurdle, and Champion Chase, which is not a unique achievement. Indeed, Henry de Bromhead did it five years ago, don’t forget. Nor is it that Mullins and Townend just missed out on the Grand Slam with Ballyburn. Nor that he won the 2026 Triumph by following, rather than despite, the brand-new rule that The Jockey Club introduced to stop him from winning it, as he did in 2025, with 100/1 Poniros. This time, he entered Apolon de Charnie, whose long and distinguished career was a single French race. This time, Willie and Patrick only won at 50/1.
Didn’t the terribly clever BHA race planners and the impecunious Jockey Club, who know how to move a running rail, also make new rules after the County Hurdle winner State Man won the Champion Hurdle… changing the rule about race experience and handicaps, blah blah? It rings a bell.
The fact is that Willie simply believes he knows what the horse can do and keeps working out how to get them to do it to the best of their ability. We didn’t think Gaelic Warrior went left-handed, and that he was 2½m max. Willie worked out how to make that untrue. He was right, we were wrong. It turned out that Lossiemouth needed headgear and a different riding plan; headgear off and different conditions for Il Etait Temps… It’s solving the riddle that Willie’s so brilliant at. And working with the right people. Friends. Family. Trusted folk.
Unlike Fat Gordy… why is there so much talk about his challenge each year? And how the hell is he ahead of Willie in The Irish Trainers Championship? By £300k?
2025 Festival: R52 W1 P12 - Win% 1.92 - E/w% 23.08 SP -£46.05
2026 Festival: R51 W1 P4 - Win% 1.96 - E/w% 7.84 SP -£49.17
Life’s a mystery!
Meanwhile, this will surely rock you to the core, leaving you flabbergasted and supine with shock! Field Marshall Healey admitted today that the Defence Investment Plan won’t be ready anytime soon. Starmer told us on March 4th the same thing; and on Feb 20th, Luke Polard gave a written reply: “The Strategic Defence Review (SDR) was presented to the Department by the external reviewers, who were working to the Terms of Reference that the review be deliverable and affordable within the fiscal envelope available to Defence. The Department is now working on the Defence Investment Plan (DIP), which will take the SDR’s strategic direction and its costed recommendations, including on capabilities, and turn them into a delivery plan to ensure we deliver an affordable programme that meets the SDR. Defence spending will see a major sustained increase over the next decade.”
Back in June 2025, Starmer was in Scotland for the launch of the SDR - but refused to give a date for when the UK would actually spend 3% of GDP on defence, which differed from Healey’s original declaration that it would happen by 2034. The authors of the SDR made it clear that the timescale of defence spending played an important part in the review: “The Government’s important decision to raise defence spending to 2.5% of GDP by 2027/28 and, vitally, to 3% in the next Parliament made an enormous difference. The decision established the affordability of our recommendations across a 10-year programme.”
You might also remember that, during that time and to save costs, Britain withdrew its only mine-hunting vessel, HMS Middleton, from Bahrain at the beginning of March. Just before the first missiles struck Tehran. Our Gulf allies are all very keen to show their approval of Britain’s support in many, many ways. Not.
During the Cheltenham cheers and groans and the noise of cranes being called in to lift the bookies’ sacks into the Securicor trucks, the House of Lords effectively disappeared - or at the very least was emasculated into The House of Doublethink. I was bewildered by many of the speeches; some of them were a cross between a “Mea Culpa”, a Dignitas application and a DNR hospital instruction. The moral posturing was sad, and I was perplexed why no one seemed to suggest that this bill was merely creating the opportunity for another 92 corruptible and contemptible elitist crooks - Lady Momes and Lord Mandelson spring to mind. Then there was Lord Taylor - false accounting; Lord Ahmed - paedophilia; Hanningfield false accounting; Lord Archer, once upon a time; Pola Uddin and her Housing claims; Truscott, Taylor, and so on and so on.
Talking of corruption, I’m afraid “the simple sword of truth and the trusty shield of British fair play” compels me to tell you that my own family has form in regard to moral posturing to the crown during one’s proposed demise. My own late GGGGGGrandfather had commanded the cavalry at Culloden, and despite having seen the various dispositions, managed to get himself lost and then captured. Sentenced to death, he wrote the most appalling and cringeworthy apology begging for his life, which was the size of a small novella. Of course, it didn’t work; he was amongst the last to be executed on Tower Hill, along with Lord Balmerino, whilst the Earl of Cromartie got pardoned because his pregnant wife had a word with the Princess of Wales. For the Boyds, t’was ever thus.
Please, God, do not let the Government get involved with protecting us from energy price rises. We can’t afford it, and Summer’s coming; we’ll all be baking, Grannies will be dying in the heat, and most importantly, the USA will have run out of missiles to give to anyone, let alone use themselves. Negotiations and climb-downs, however one dresses it up, will have to come in the next month, because there are simply no major munitions left. What comes now is drone warfare, and an effective sea-based air screen, which the USA is trying to assemble, will see the Hormuz straits open by July.
Pentagon officials told lawmakers earlier this week that the conflict had already cost the USA $11+bn in its first six days, and it will be asking for up to $50bn in additional funding from the White House and Congress in the coming days to support ongoing military operations. Capitol Hill, in the shape of both the Democrats and the “purse-string” Republicans, will argue the administration launched the war without congressional authorisation.
I was going to give you a recipe for a Naval Rum Shrub, as I discovered a bottle of (Navy proof 57%) rum in the back of the cupboard. But I’d better test it first… my devotion to your collective well-being knows no bounds! So instead, I give you this recipe from the Hotel Phoenicia in Valetta.
THE PHOENICIA HOTEL’S WHISKY SOUR
The ever-suave Silvan Camilleri used to run The Phoenicia in Valetta, Malta, and he assures me the recipe has never changed. Essentially, it is:
INGREDIENTS
· 50 ml Jim Bean Bourbon Whiskey
· 20ml Lemon Juice
· 20ml Sugar Syrup
· 1 egg white
METHOD
· Take an ice-cold glass from the freezer.
· Dip the rim into lemon juice (use a saucer, you numpty).
· Turn the glass rim in another saucer of caster sugar to give a frosted, sweet-and-sour rim.
· Open Shaker, add Ice, add the above ingredients, shake vigorously for at least 30 secs.
· Pour.