Trainer Olly Murphy was trying hard at Sandown Park last Saturday not to get carried away after his Chasing Fire had extended his unbeaten career to five with a convincing win in the Virgin Bet Novices’ Hurdle. ‘He’s good but I don’t know how good,’ he declared. ‘Could he win a Supreme? I’ve had a second and third but never the winner. I’ve only been training for five years and haven’t had a champion, but I hope this one can be good.’ Particularly delighted that the gelding had won in the familiar blue colours of Diana and Grahame Whateley, the stable’s biggest backers, Olly noted that you have to throw a lot of money at it to achieve success in racing. As he put it: ‘You get to kiss an awful lot of frogs before you find a Prince Charming.’ In Chasing Fire he may well have found one.

Former Times editor Charlie Wilson, whose joyful memorial service in St Bride’s took place after this column last appeared, would have appreciated Murphy’s comment. Charlie, the best newspaperman I ever worked for, was both a true racing enthusiast and a realist and along with several Times correspondents, including yours truly, he was in the syndicate who owned Sunday for Monday. Sunday for Monday, alas, was not a Frankel or a Sea The Stars. The only things he possessed in common with a champion racehorse were four legs and a tail. I cannot swear to it that it was him but I seem to hear Charlie’s voice in my ear as I recall our trainer urging the jockey on one outing to keep his mount in touch with the field for the first five furlongs and then ‘let him find himself’. ‘Wouldn’t it be nice,’ came the sardonic Glaswegian aside, ‘if for once he actually found the other runners?’

Of course Charlie could be tough. In a warmly human eulogy, Times lifer Phil Webster recalled the subeditor whom Charlie never addressed by name but only as Fingertips. ‘Why Fingertips?’ the unfortunate once inquired of his editor. ‘Because that’s all you’re hanging on by, Laddie.’ But there was kindness too. In the other elegant and affectionate eulogy, Brough Scott revealed that when Charlie needed a driver he contacted the Jockeys’ Association to find out if there was a former rider looking for employment. The man who used to drive him to Hyde Park of a morning for Charlie to enjoy before work another bruising but determined encounter with a four-legged hack – it was Charlie, not the hack, who got the bruises, for he was alas no natural horseman – was David ‘Flapper’ Yates, the one-time champion apprentice.

The late Doug Marks, the Lambourn trainer, once told me how he had put up Flapper Yates, named for his prominent ears not his temperament, to ride Golden Fire in the Cesarewitch handicap. So certain was the trainer of the forthcoming victory that his orders to the jockey, with the next year in mind, were: ‘Don’t win too far.’ Yates obeyed orders and sat behind Willie Williamson who then twice crossed him and beat him to the line. Yates insisted they must object to the winner. They did so and were awarded the race. What I learned only last week from Brough was that Yates borrowed the tenner then required to lodge the objection from Lester Piggott. Any man who could persuade Lester Piggott to lend him money was surely capable of handling any early-morning grumpiness from Charlie Wilson.

No need for any grumpiness about our Twelve to Follow this winter. Five of them have won at least once already, Manothepeople at 6-4, Iron Bridge at 85-40, Midnight River at 6-1, Maximilian at 13-2 and Scriptwriter at 11-1, which is enough to be going on with. I also tend to keep an eye on others that have figured in the Twelve in previous seasons and of those Ga Law, selected two years ago, came back from injury to win the Paddy Power Gold Cup. I kept the faith, too, with last season’s selection Third Time Lucki whom Dan Skelton ran in the Virgin Bet Dolos Handicap at Sandown on Saturday. Third Time Lucki is a hold-up horse who has plenty of speed but who has to be produced only at the last minute. Kielan Woods, who is having such a productive season as the main go-to rider for Ben Pauling, executed his task perfectly, keeping his mount in the rear, then making ground four out, going second approaching the last fence and then taking the lead on the run-in to win at 5-1.

Surprisingly, it was Kielan’s first winner at Sandown. It means that he has now ridden winners on every jumping course in Britain. But for owner Mike Newbould Third Time Lucki’s success produced an even better statistic: it was his 100th victory as an owner. He joked afterwards that Dan Skelton had promised on TV that the century was coming up any day: that was in October and it had taken three months to fulfil the pledge.