For the past 30 years Robin Oakley has taken you through the front door of the horse-racing world and kept you in the best of company. There’s not a chance of me lasting that long, and more often than not when I try to shine a light on the sport’s brilliant mix of heroes, narcissists and geniuses it will be via the back door.

Alex Frost falls firmly into the genius category, so I went to see him in London last week – and I arrived bang out of sorts. My Oura Ring informed me that I had 26 low blood oxygen incidents during the night and my sleep apnea mask is making weird noises. And combining microdosing Mounjaro with getting soaked in the wrong gear at the Countryside Day at Cheltenham had made me ‘a bit off’. Nevertheless, I was looking forward to shooting the breeze with Frost, the smartest entrepreneur in horse racing by a country mile; although he might not be feeling that chipper right now having taken on the Tote, which is part of a sector that Rachel Reeves is going to batter in the Budget.

In addition to his tribulations in the office, Ed Miliband is about to surround Frost’s stud farm with 2,000 acres of solar panels, so I was expecting him to be incredibly depressed and shot to pieces when we met at the Delauney in the Aldwych. 

But I was wrong. He looked like a flipping model for greenjuice.com as he floated to our table and ordered a big pot of English Breakfast tea. No........

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