'It's one cock-up after another - a big industry being run like it's a gymkhana'

The coffee and biscuits are on the table and there are a lot of things I want to ask John Francome. After all, he's a former seven-time champion jockey, trainer, TV pundit and author of a slew of racing novels, so I'm pretty sure he must have something to say about the state of the National Hunt game at this tantalising stage of the season.

He's already told me he still likes few things more than watching a good novice chase, and the name of Constitution Hill cropped up even before the first chocolate chip cookie went down, which makes me optimistic for the next couple of hours.

The trouble with Francome is that he's hard to pin down. If he were a horse he'd need the red hood going down to the start, followed by blinkers and cheekpieces, not because he's ungenuine but because he has the kind of restless, polymathic brain that could do every job in Rishi Sunak's cabinet, probably before breakfast, and then move on to a spot of moonlighting as secretary-general of the United Nations.