We’re spoilt for choice in the Cotswolds. There’s a brilliant National Hunt trainer in every valley and the villages are stuffed with good pubs.

In spite of competition from names synonymous with the biggest races – Jonjo O’Neill, Nigel Twiston-Davies and Kim Bailey, not to mention a stack of other talented operators – it’s Ben Pauling whose star is rising. I’ve been very fond of Ben since he was a nipper. We’re both sons of Chipping Norton farmers, so a SML (Sensible Monday Lunch) tends to be both a pleasure and also a disappointment that it isn’t a PFL. (You can work that out for yourself.)

But where to meet? The Old Butchers in Stow-on-the-Wold is jolly good and the second oldest race sponsor in the country, Nick Clark, of Haynes Hanson & Clark, is usually in there knocking back some of his splosh. But it’s closed on Mondays, probably because Nick has that day off.

The Fox in Oddington is one of my favourites because it still has a proper meeter-and-greeter, Vincent. Call me old fashioned but I like to get a nice warm welcome when I’m out on a pub crawl. Then there’s Oaks-winning breeder Lady Bamford’s other pub, the Wild Rabbit in Kingham, which hits the spot if you eat in the bar. Or Archie Orr-Ewing’s Kings Head in Bledington, one of the few owner-operated joints still on the go and lethal during the Cheltenham Festival. Or the Chequers in Churchill where I’ve been drinking with Gerald from Clarkson’s Farm since I was 14.

And those are only the ones in cycling distance. Normally I’d just go to all of them because its too difficult to choose – but as we were only having a SML, I let Ben pick.

It was straight out of Jilly Cooper central casting, with female jockettes wearing jodhpurs of spray-on tightness

‘Let’s go to the Hollow Bottom [in Guiting Power],’ he suggested. ‘It’s very good.’ It was straight out of Jilly Cooper central casting. There were jockeys calling in for a pint after riding out 16 horses that morning, another still celebrating a winner he’d ridden the day before and a number of female jockettes wearing jodhpurs of spray-on tightness. Apparently they’re all bonking each other – Jilly would be so gratified.

As bad luck would have it, we sat in a bay window seat beside a picture of Earth Summit beating Suny Bay in the Grand National. The final nail in my racehorse trainer coffin. It also reminded me that the Hollow Bottom was put on the map when owned by trainers Charlie Egerton and Nigel Twiston-Davies, champion jockey Peter Scudamore and property tycoon Raymond Mould. Three of them made Herculean efforts to drink the profits while the fourth discovered there were none.

Ben has had quite an interesting life. When he was a budding point-to-point jockey, he got injured working on the farm and lost the use of his right eye. ‘So that was it, game over,’ he recalled matter-of-factly as we tucked into our first pint. But it also changed his life ‘in the right way’.

It sent him down a path that ended up in trainer Nicky Henderson’s yard for six-and-a-half years. Henderson is, in Pauling’s opinion, ‘a genius’. ‘I had the best time of my life working with great people and amazing horses, but I think Nicky thought we were having too much fun.’ We both concurred that Nicky probably had enjoyed his early twenties in his day.

I went for a pint of Hooky. It’s a local beer of moderate strength, referred to by gamekeepers as driving beer. Slightly embarrassingly, I find I drink the first one incredibly quickly. It’s almost like the scene in Ice Cold in Alex. It just doesn’t touch the sides.

Ben raised an eyebrow. He’d only had a couple of sips. But thankfully, after one gulp of my second pint, the Mounjaro kicked in and I stopped like Il Est Francais.

Thirteen years ago Ben started training down the road with eight horses he scraped together. Barters Hill was the first horse he bought, for £12,000. Among other good races, he won the Grade 1 Challow Hurdle. That’s the way to get yourself going as a trainer. He now has 130 horses under his care.

The move to Naunton Downs, where he bought the worst golf course in England and turned it into a glorious training complex, was perfect timing after Covid. On the back of a season dogged by a virus – something that every trainer has to learn to cope with from time to time – the new yard blew a new life into his horses. And they’ve never looked back.

There are always reasons why some trainers stand out from others. Why some bounce along at a certain level, struggling to fill their yards with horses that they really want, while a few take off. And make no mistake, Ben was well and truly breaking the sound barrier before he won the King George on Boxing Day with the Jukebox Man. ‘He was flat out from three out at Kempton,’ Pauling reflected. ‘I think Cheltenham will suit him tactically and he’ll get the trip [in the Gold Cup]… we’ll go straight there. And don’t forget Mambonumberfive… he’s unbelievable.’

Undoubtedly a good grounding is important for a trainer. It’s no coincidence that so many good trainers learned their trade with Henderson and Paul Nicholls. But to succeed, a young trainer also needs to be skilful at their art, lucky, a good communicator and a good judge of a horse.

Pauling has all of the above. He also has a positive glass-half-full approach. ‘Successful owners want positivity. They didn’t get into a position to be able to have horses by being negative.’

After we wrapped up our SML, I apologised profusely to Rob, who had come to pick me up, for being sober and thus wasting his precious time. Thankfully he is very understanding.