'I'm not kicking jockeys off horses - owners come to me and ask me to ride'

Initially, Frankie Dettori is delighted when it is put to him that he dominates the Derby build-up like a modern-day Lester Piggott.

“Yes!” says the man who won the Derby for the second time on Golden Horn seven years ago. Then he spots the hidden tripwire and he bursts out laughing.

Last year Dettori was parachuted on to John Leeper’s back at the 11th hour, as he had been 12 months previously when he supplanted Tom Marquand aboard the favourite, English King. This time Gavin Ryan is the hapless victim as Dettori takes over on Piz Badile, a proper dark horse owned by the Niarchos’s Flaxman Stables.