When things went wrong in his days running the Daily Mirror, the scoundrel Robert Maxwell used to shout: ‘Which effing idiot thought of doing that?’ Told once by a bolder-than-average subordinate that what proved to have been a disaster had been his own idea, he responded: ‘In that case what effing idiot let me do it?’

Thanks partly to generous layers who pay up to six places in Heritage handicaps, it has been a prosperous punting season for me but at Newbury last Saturday it was bookmakers 7 – Oakley nil and I have nobody to blame but myself.