Derby and Gill

Derby day. The train is wedged, but the throng is different from the usual early-morning London swarm. Sharp suits abound as usual while newspapers are devoured, but there the similarities end. For the day that’s in it, plenty have chosen to accessorize – binoculars and baskets instead of briefcases, along with top hats and tails and the all too rare sight of folk going about their business wearing smiles.

Or lecherous, melon-slice leers in the case of many of the men. “You see some of the best dressed and beautiful women in the world at the races,” mused George C Scott’s character Bert Gordon in The Hustler. He wasn’t wrong; Bert would have been in his element here. The sun is shining, the forecast is good and the women have dressed accordingly. Cleavage spills out of summer dresses, hangovers are forgotten, equine information of questionable quality is shared and somebody cracks open a bottle of chilled champagne. It’s passed up and down the carriage for anyone who wants a slug until the ticket collector intervenes. Hold on, it’s alright – ticket collectors have thirsts to slake too. Onwards! Tally ho! To Epsom Downs and don’t spare the horses.
Yes, the horses – the reason we’re here. The Epsom Derby is renowned as the stiffest, most exciting test you’ll ever see on a racecourse, bar none… apart from the Cheltenham Gold Cup, the Grand National and several others run over the sticks and more readily associated with big dirty pints of porter than jugs of Pimms and lemonade. But for my money, the one race that knocks them all into a cocked hat is today’s preliminary at Epsom: The Sport Relief Mascot Derby.
Forget that j-peg of the monkey drinking his own piddle straight from the source, the sight of old ladies falling over on the street, or Compo from Last Of The Summer Wine rolling down a hill in a barrel – if there is any spectacle in the world more comical than the sight of a dizzying array of men in enormous foam rubber animal costumes contesting a one-furlong dash, in sweltering heat, in front of a baying 120,000-strong largely pissed-up mob, I have yet to see it.
After what seemed an eternity of pre-race mind games and jockeying for position, the competitors eventually came under starter’s orders and set off minutes after the ‘G’ of B-A-N-G!. Ante-post favourite Sid The Shark from County Cricket champions Sussex took advantage of what little juice there was in the freshly watered ground to gobble up the small fry and slice his way through the pack of sweltering wildlife (among them an eight-foot eagle and a giant rugby league-playing rhinoceros, no less) to sail into a seemingly assailable lead.
But with the winning post in sight, tragedy struck. Sid trod on one of his own fins and, in a travesty reminiscent of Devon Lough’s extraordinary belly-flop when seemingly home and hosed in the 1956 Grand National, went dorsal-over-gill, in the process handing victory on a plate to Sting, the giant furry wasp representing that Heineken Cup-winning English rugby club whose name escapes me at the moment.
“I could only see just in front of me,” explained the gutted Great White in a post-race interview as his victorious rival buzzed excitedly in the background. “I didn’t realise I’d out-sprinted everyone, but by the end I was getting knackered and just tripped on one of the fins. The replays show me taking a huge dive. It was great TV!”
As I’m sure was the other main event of the day, won by the best horse in the race, North Light, who was given a masterful ride by Irish jockey Kieren Fallon. A very small man whose career was written off just a couple of months ago after he got tangled up in a different kind of sting executed by the tabloid press, the chippy little pilot from Clare answered his critics in fine style, passing the finish line and waving three fingers in the air to signify his tally of Derby winners. The temptation to wave just the two at his detractors must have been overwhelming.
The deafening, hackle-raising roars as the sweat-soaked horses swept out of the final steep dip of the Epsom equine roller-coaster ride, around the famous Tattenham Corner and up the home straight, threatened to blow O’Mahony’s bar clean off the top of the Grandstand, which would have been a shame, as myself and my adherents were watching from the veranda just outside it. But with the race over, and a thick winning wedge trousered, it was time to get down to the serious business of enjoying a heavy dose of light refreshment.
There are a variety of ways of doing this at the Derby – for just a few quid, you can do it Tipp-hurling-fan-in-Dublin style: enjoying a traditional “hang sangidge” picnic near the outfield’s funfair, while drinking cold tea from a lemonade bottle. Alternatively, you can do it Offaly-hurling-fan-in-Dublin-style: enjoying canapés and ice-cold Cristal from a solid gold bucket in a Grandstand VIP bar, surrounded by royalty and being served by topless Nubians dressed like Xena Warrior Princess.
Whichever option you go for, a good time is assured as I can safely say that while it wouldn’t hold a candle to a Kilbeggan egg-and-spoon, Derby day at Epsom is as fine a fine old English institution as you’ll ever see. Long may it continue.