One particular piece on being snowed in and the need for essentials of life ("gaspers") made me cry with laughter when first written in the old weekender and I was delighted to see it. The cover may have some limited signs of wear but the pages are clean, intact and the spine remains undamaged. To be honest, we are talking five or six days ahead of the meeting, and I have learnt down the years that you get a flood of information from lots of people and you have to learn with people to separate the dreamers from the realists. By turns moving, uplifting and laugh-out-loud funny, this book provides ample proof of one racing certainty: that no one catches the spirit of racing as Alastair Down does.

There is some cruelty in its beauty, it’s a very hard place and I have seen desperate tragedies to horse and human there and you know that those risks are being run on your behalf. His son Peter was a champion jockey – and now runs a successful stable in Scotland with his partner Lucida Russell. Then I thought betting was very easy; ‘You just back the white one - it’s so very simple, I don’t know why everybody else doesn’t do that! On his favourite racehorse: 'I'll still thump anyone who doesn ' t appreciate that Rondetto was the greatest chaser of all time. In 1935 Down had qualified as an officer and was commissioned into the 7th/9th Battalion, Royal Scots.Cheltenham has been made easier over the years and many, many more ways than it has been publicised - but rightly so, and we are still making innovations, like after last year’s four miler - which was a bit like the refute from Moscow but without Napoleon. But missing the Festival is unthinkable for one of the finest sports journalists of our time, and a man whose presence is still much missed by viewers of Channel 4 Racing. Alastair Down joined The Sporting Life in 1981 and remained with that paper until its closure in 1998, at which point he joined the Racing Post. Put it this way, three or four people woke up on the platform at Paddington at 3am the following morning, it was that sort of day!

Alastair Down on the Cheltenham Festival: ‘To go there and stand witness to extraordinary events is a rare and wonderful act of being at one with your fellow clutterers of the planet . It won at top weight and I remember running into Jim a day later and he grunted at me to say ‘hello’ as he always does; and I said to Jim, “Just to say, I’ve been driving a Ford Fiesta but next week I’ll be driving a Saab Turbo thanks to you!

Ok judging by the other forum topic about him there are some people who do not like him but seem to read his columns. After the Gold Cup I had about three people ring me up and tell me they had had the best day’s betting of their lives so they didn’t know it was meant to run in the other race!