It's gone swimmingly badly at HQ

and it's not even panto season yet... Oh yes it is. oh no....

The rain lashed down at Newmarket and we saw our nailed-on double of Monumental and Jan Brueghel get turned over this afternoon, although JB’s Melbourne Cup price still looks value. Selections fell by the wayside as the racecourse staff handed out rubber dinghies and Scuba suits, and generally, the pervasive gloom caused by the dreadful reports from Liverpool of sleaze and flurries of ignorance, mixed with gale-force ineptitude all added to the murk.

Somewhere in the midst of it all, news filtered through that the Jockey Club (I am guessing under the advisement of the wonks at BHA and quite possibly the RSPCA) announced their changes to The NH Festival card. Desperate to make it ordinary, they have removed Grade 1 status from this, and amateur status from that, and shortened the other so that if you turn right on the M5 past Bristol, it leads directly to Aintree or Fairyhouse. Inevitably - because that is where racing has now managed to position itself - an angry multi-millionaire Irishman has declared the whole thing to be a farce. I shall be deeply unsurprised if Peter O’Savill doesn’t express an opinion by sundown. (Surely he must be an O’ by virtue of his donated Cricket ground to Irish Cricket in Wicklow)?

Of course, for many people, the JC changes are irrelevant. They have already made it too expensive, too tiresome to get to, and too dull to bet on, and everyone I know is halving their attendance unless they are committed by dint of work. Going will be so expensive, unless you are Circa Starmer, that four days at Cheltenham will surely attract the attention of The Tax Man - be warned!

I was marginally cheered by the news that the Schlapper Sisters, Kerry Katona and Kate Price, are appearing in panto together. Katie, 46, and Kerry, 44, are playing the wicked stepsisters in a production of Cinderella at Northwich Memorial Court later this year. Between the pair, they will, I fear, add a whole new meaning to the term Stage Door Johnnies!