Vintage Haigh: The Master Punter returns, and the word is. . . Golan

Paul Haigh also wrote under the alias of The Master Punter. This article was first published in the Racing Post on July 27, 2002

It started, as things so often do, with a rumour. Someone claimed to have seen Him at a meeting somewhere in the North. But before he could approach, the massive figure, wraithlike, had vanished - possibly into the burger bar, possibly the gents.

Someone else claimed to have caught a glimpse of Him buying a Racing Post in a motorway service station. But, since this witness had earlier claimed to have spotted both Elvis and Osama Bin Laden at Butlin's, Bognor Regis, his evidence was, perhaps foolishly, disregarded.

Then came the mysterious disappearances of members of the Old Guard. One of the former dancing girls left her husband of four years, leaving a curt note advising him that "more pressing matters" made her departure "a necessity".

Citing "personal reasons", the former Chief Deputy Assistant Grape-Peeler resigned abruptly from his senior advisory position in Downing Street; and dozens of former petal-strewers, several of whom had attained quite high rank in industry, academe and the media, simultaneously downed tools and left their homes without leaving forwarding addresses.

It was, however, only when the dress rehearsal for today's ceremonial visit, which had taken place at a secret location on Salisbury Plain, had been filmed by a daring cameraman cleverly disguised as a sheep that the truth could at last be confirmed. Like Lenin in 1917, like the Lionheart from the Crusades, like Bonaparte from Elba, The Master Punter had returned!

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Immediately, thousands flocked to his standard: many bearing votive offerings - a framed betting ticket here, a styrofoam coffee cup containing the droppings of one of his myriad winners there - weeping in the rapturous realisation that the long Dark Age of their deprivation was at an end.

The Executive Foot Bather and Boot Polisher, however, who had resumed his secondary duties as social secretary, was quite ruthless in his determination to preserve the Master's privacy. Offer whatever inducements they liked (and some of the younger female acolytes were quite brazen in this respect), only a chosen few, selected purely on the basis of proven trustworthiness and integrity, were ushered into The Presence - there to make obeisance, and to glean what sooth they might, if and when the Wise One chose to respond to their blandishments.

There is no need to weary you with an account of how one of this column's agents managed to obtain entry to the sanctum sanctorum and an audience with The Master. Suffice it to say that we have our ways and means, that it has been achieved, and that the overused term 'exclusive' provides a hopelessly inadequate description of his sensational report.

He told me: "The Master sat in the same cross-legged position we have always known and loved. He has perhaps put on a little weight - another six or seven stone? - in the period of his self-imposed retreat, which began, you will recall, after the incomprehensible defeat of Double Trigger in the Gold Cup. But the demeanour, the grandeur, the stillness are unchanged. You would recognise him instantly in a stadium full of five-hundred-pound bald persons. There is but one Master Punter, and this was he.

"For several minutes after my declarations of loyalty we sat facing each other in a pregnant silence broken only by the soft swishing of the punkah wallahs and the occasional noise from the pot of unguent which the Head Masseuse was applying liberally to the Master's temples.

"At length I gathered the courage to speak. 'Wise One,' I stammered. 'You have returned, and for this alone we will always remain in your debt. But it has occurred to us that only a unique betting opportunity can have coaxed you from your exile. Since you invest only at Group 1 level we are forced to conclude that this opportunity occurs in the King George. Could you . . . would you, vouchsafe the name?'

"For a moment the great eyes locked with mine and I felt myself filling with an immense calm, far beyond my powers to convey. Then he spoke. 'Go on,' I thought he said. 'Go on?' I replied. 'But, Master, go on about what?' 'No eejit,' he intoned - he has a curious voice: a hint of Irish, a hint of French, more than a hint of Katmandu. 'I said Golan.'

"Before I could stop myself I asked: 'And a saver on Aquarelliste?' It was at this point that I was seized by acolytes. It is best, I think, if I refrain from attempting a description of the period of 're-education' I then was forced to undergo."