20 JANUARY 2007, Page 42

Second best

Robin Oakley Apunting friend at Kempton Park told me about the school class last week who were asked to stand up and talk about what their fathers did for a living. The sons of bakers and binmen, stockbrokers and scaffolders all happily recounted their parents' daily routines. But one little lad at the back refused to come forward. Finally, when pressed, he mumbled, 'My Dad wears fishnet stockings and works as a male pole dancer in a sleazy night club.'

After class the teacher remonstrated, 'Now come on, Johnny, that wasn't the truth, was it? I've seen your Dad, the clothes he wears, the car he drives. He'd have been really embarrassed, wouldn't he, to hear you make up something like that.' Came the reply: 'Not nearly as embarrassed as I'd have been, Miss, having to tell the class he's an England Test cricketer.'

Impressing your children, even when they are film directors of 30-plus, isn't easy. On Boxing Day I managed it, marking my son's card at Wincanton for a day out with the in-laws and providing five winners. There was an unaccustomed flurry of filial respect. He even bought me a drink. And my golden streak went on. For a fortnight afterwards I was flying, smugly waving bookies' cheques at Mrs Oakley across the breakfast table. But in racing you need to relish every particle of ambrosia while you can taste it. It's back to cold porridge soon enough.

I took Alex along with me to Kempton on Saturday, planning to keep up the good work. 'For a start,' I said, 'get yourself some extra stake money with Alan King's Trouble At Bay in the second, a novice chase. The Barbury Castle horses are on fire and it's the form horse of the afternoon.'

'What about Royal Shakespeare?' he inquired. 'Oh, a decent sort over hurdles,' I said, 'but he's the kind who always finds one to beat him' So what happens? After three runs over fences without winning, Royal Shakespeare chooses to come good at Kempton, powering ten lengths clear of Trouble At Bay.

Actually, I was delighted for the horse, one of the soundest, most honest animals in training, the sort you can measure every other horse's performance by. As the owner John Webb complained, Royal Shakespeare is never given due credit despite having won the Order of Merit last season by dint of being placed in a whole series of top races. 'Everyone keeps writing him off, but perhaps he'll get a few mentions now. The ground doesn't suit at the moment, and it's a pity that he's eight or ten pounds short of the best Irish horses, but he's getting his act together.' Royal Shakespeare won't, though, be challenging for Cheltenham prizes. 'He doesn't like that hill,' says his owner.

That was one setback. 'Never mind,' I told my son. 'You can't go wrong backing fancied horses from Nicky Henderson's yard here. He always does well with his Kempton runners.' So we lumped on the odds-on Henderson-trained Princelet in the next, only for the horse to sprawl over the last hurdle and let Royal Shakespeare's stable companion Romany Prince, a 40-1 shot, get back past him to win by a neck.

Back in the winner's enclosure, owner John Webb was cheerily declaring, 'I'm getting used to this,' as he phoned the absent trainer Steve Gollings to congratulate him on their double. Gollings's wife Jayne confessed, 'He hadn't run since June. We thought he'd been off too long, the ground wasn't right and the course wouldn't suit, and the stable's been under a cloud with several of them coughing, but what do we know. ... then you go and get a double.' I am all for the glorious uncertainty of racing, but rather less so when I've just gone down heavily on an 8-13 shot.

But there was worse to come. There was another Nicky Henderson-trained favourite in the next, the Queen's horse Barbers Shop. We did the loyal thing, in spades, only for Secret Ploy, in only his second race after a 21-month lay-off with a tendon injury, to get the better of Barbers Shop by half a length in a ding-dong struggle at the end of the three miles. Nicky was confident Barbers Shop will go on to better things, probably over two and a half miles. 'It was only the fourth race of his life,' he pointed out, and Barbers Shop jumps better at a faster pace. But that wasn't much consolation. Nor was the big race, the intercasino.uk Lanzarote Hurdle, either for us or for the Henderson yard. His two contenders, Royals Darling and Afrad, finished second and third, sandwiched between Gary Moore's two entries Verasi and Nation State. In each case it was the stable's lesser-fancied entry which did best. If they can't work it out, no wonder we were having trouble doing so.

The other two races on the card brought us two more seconds, Bengo and Laskari, who will both be worth an interest next time out. But there were no two ways about it. We hadn't sniffed a winner between us and we were going home skint. 'Never mind,' I said as we parted. 'I hear on good authority [as I had] that they've been piling money on Augustus John, an ex-Aidan O'Brien-trained horse, trained by Tim Pitt, in the last race at Lingfield. Looks like he's trying to give his friend John Egan a decent comeback ride after injury.'

Sure enough, Augustus John was backed all the way down to 11-10 favourite. And like everything else I touched that day he finished second. Funny thing, but my son hasn't called since for any further advice.