5 years ago | Chamberlains Farm, Shevington Moor | 5th June 2018

Five years ago, I was asked for a quote for a piece in the Horse & Hound, To be honest, it sounds more auspicious than it probably is. If you were anyone in the sprockets and grommets market, you’d soon end up getting quoted in Sprockets & Gromits Weekly (or whatever it is) but anyone of any prominence in the ‘horse world’ will, sooner or later, end up in ‘H&H‘, one of our country’s more idiosyncratic publications.

I don’t think it’s too wide of the mark to describe it in such a way. When, in ‘Notting Hill’, Hugh Grant’s character (Ben Thacker) was trying to infiltrate a press conference to see Julia Roberts’ character (Anna Scott), the writers decided that the most ‘British’ and therefore most comedic thing he could do was to pretend to be a representative of was this very title. It might be regarded as something of a bible within the riding community but in the ‘muggle’ world beyond, it’s a perfect embodiment of every ‘hooray Henry’ stereotype that equestrianism tends to invoke.

Okay, full disclosure: it wasn’t my first appearance in the magazine – and it wasn’t my last. I’ve done plenty of PR pieces before about store openings, a fire and at least one product recall. Since this story, I’ve been interviewed and quoted in there about the impact of the Covid pandemic, in 2020.

It’s also led to something of an ongoing rivalry between Helen and me. I’ve probably appeared in Horse & Hound about five or six times and, while I think I’ve only ever seen Helen in there twice (for Top 3 finishes in her section at various Events), she says it’s more than that. We both claim to have appeared on its pages more than the other.

To be honest, whatever the ‘score’ is between us, she did have to work a lot harder to get her mentions than I did; actually winning a rosette instead of simply forging a minor reputation as an industry rent-a-gob.