Trainer John Gosden is a colossus in Newmarket, the centre of the horse-racing industry. Two-and-a-half-thousand horses are trained here and the most sought-after bloodstock is also bred in the surrounding studs, then traded in the sales ring at Tattersalls.

Forty-seven years ago, Gosden left Vincent O’Brien’s yard in Tipperary, Ireland, to set up in California – with just three horses. Since that pioneering venture, he has conquered the racing world and is now considered to be ‘The Godfather’ of flat racing in this country.

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So my heart should have been dancing at the prospect of shooting the breeze with him last week at his Clarehaven stables on a gloriously sunny afternoon, and looking at his three-year-olds, who have taken all before them this season. But as I drove into Newmarket I couldn’t help remembering the first time I made that journey, 48 years ago, in a beaten-up Morris Minor pickup with two petrol cans in the boot, which just about got me to my journey’s end: Harry Thomson Jones’s immaculate yard, where I was considered to be so scruffy they hid me from the trainer in the tack room.

I’ve been overawed by Newmarket ever since, although I think I’ve fared marginally better in the intervening years than its high street, which has seen the demise of not only the iconic Rutland Arms Hotel, but also the less iconic strip club. The high street now hosts four betting shops........

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