As a result of a disturbing collaboration between the News of the World, the City of London Police (who took it on after the Met couldn’t see a case) and the Jockey Club (head of security – ex-policeman  Paul Scotney), Fallon was roped in and charged with a group of others of whom the Jockey Club had reason to be suspicious. Paul Scotney is widely on record as having expressed his almost obsessive desire to “get” Fallon. Thus Fallon had to undergo a long, gruelling trial for charges which, if provable, would have seen him in jail and his illustrious career in tatters, purely by association with some of the other parties on trial.
But as it turned out, Mahmood’s evidence against Fallon was so severely tainted by lies and manipulation of teh facts in his efforts to produce a big story, that the judge had little option but to instruct the jury to throw it out along with the somewhat shaky case produced by the Jocjey Club against the other parties.
Once the criminal trial was out of the way, Fallon was free to pursue the News of the World for the horrendous libel they had published about him. The paper settled at once and, not for the first time, Rupert Rumplechops had to watch as his inept newsmen handed out a few hundred thousand more from his coffers in damages and legal costs.

Worth Noting:
This was yet another example of bungling by former Screws editor (AND TORY HEAD SPINNER), Andy Coulson (since disgraced over the royal phone-tapping), and long-time managing editor Stuart Kuttner, sacked this year for his part in the Gordon Taylor phone-hacking debacle.

   If only Franz had sought to work out his fantasies in a more manageable way, like the surprisingly adventurous Lord (David) Lipsey, who despite his credentials as an economist, financial journalist and adviser to the Labour government, has seen the fulfilment of his equine dreams by owning and driving his own trotting horses, and, much to the amazement of the Welsh trotting folk who sold them to him, winning with them.

Driving trotters (or “pacers”) from a flimsy sulky, as practised in mid Wales and the Marches, is (I’m told) a seriously gut-churning experience and, even without Charlton Heston to whip it up, provides as exciting a spectator sport as you could see in any public arena, which, without the spinning axle blades to slice an opponents’ spokes, has it over Roman chariot racing as far as our Health & Safety minders are concerned.

I love the trotters, and persuaded my friends, John & Carol Challis that they too should experience the rough and tumble of the Mid-Wales and Border Counties Trotting Association – an organisation with a pleasingly slender rule book (unlike their more fastidious cousins, the British Harness Racing Club). Given John’s alter ego, since 1981, as Boycie in Only Fools and Horses, he risked the tabloid headline, “Boycie visits the Trotters” but agreed to traipse across country to the Bell in Almeley, west Herefordshire, where we met Ray Thomas, landlord of the Lion Hotel in Llanbister, builder, farmer, horseman, traveller and polymath, who had a runner in the pre-novice race and whom I’d asked to mark our card for the day. He led us off to a nearby field in which a few Portaloos and a beer tent had been erected for the races. A course was laid out with sporadic wood posts and lengths of rope. A flat bed trailer by the winning post accommodated the judges and the commentator. A race card offered the runners and rivers for a dozen or so trials of speed.

Trotting is not a traditonal activity of the tweed-and-Barbour Range-Roving classes; it is run and watched by unsophisticated, sturdy Celtic folk – skilled, tough and canny they are too, though not always as canny as the bookies that come out to take their money each week. Neither the bookies nor the punters, though, can ever be sure who’s trying to do what, and both rely on assessing the whiteness of the knuckles of the drivers of the runners-up in the earlier heats, so as to know how to skew the odds in the finals.

A lot of the punters, it turned out, were also fans of Only Fools and Horses, and John was asked ceremoniously to leave his imprimatur (or, at least, Boycie’s) on the bar of the beer tent that does the rounds of the border trotting meetings.

There’ll never be trotting at the O2 Arena, thank God, and with luck it will remain our Marcher country speciality for some time. The season’s more or less over now, but if you’d like to see some real, live chariot racing, make a note that the premier meeting of the year takes place at Pen-y-Bont in Powys, over a wonderful, ramshackle course, complete with clapboard Grandstand and known as the Wembley of the West, on the first Wednesday of August. You won’t need your Ascot hat, but you’ll see as much sport.

And with him was his fiancée, Rupert Murdoch’s favourite larrikin, editor of our biggest selling national newspaper and my Wapping pin-up, Rebekah Wade. I can tell you truthfully that Ludlow is seldom visited by journalistas of such distinction. Resisting the urge to pester Ms Wade, and, frankly, not expecting a positive reaction to her appearance in my last book and on this blog, I nevertheless felt I should do what I could to welcome the newly fledged race-track novelist to the fold of race-track novelists to which I belong, and bought a copy of Charlie’s book, Citizen, from the affable author.

Launched last week with a stellar guest list including Messrs Cameron and ChoirBoy Osborne as well as editors of the rest of Rupert’s stable, it was well-reviewed in the Sunday Times yesterday. The Guardian – you may think a little churlishly – implied that, as the TestaRossa has been rumoured to be going on to a more general command of Murdoch UK, that a review – and a favourable one – in another News Corp sheet was inevitable.

I haven’t read it yet but will pass on the benefit of my own review in the near future.

Venetia Williams has qualities that would have allowed her to succeed in whatever career she’d chosen. She’s brave, independent and dedicated. She had been a good amateur race-rider herself until, within a fortnight of hitting the turf at Becher’s Brook in the 1988 National, she fell again at Worcester and broke her neck. It augured well that she came through a potentially fatal or seriously debilitating accident still able to walk and pursue the next phase of her life with horses.

Starting with former Herefordshire trainer, John Edwards, she mapped out a comprehensive training path for herself, attached for several years to the all-conquering Martin Pipe yard in Somerset, as well as spending time in American and Australian yards. Setting up on her own 14 seasons ago, she never lost a chance to catch up on any innovations in equine medicine or training technique. I was once sitting next to her at dinner with the then burgeoning (now arrived) vet-turned trainer Mark Johnston, a man bursting with revolutionary ideas (and strong opinions). Normally an unquenchable chatterbox, I couldn’t get a word in.

One distinctive aspect of Venetia’s yard is the amount of time her inmates are outmates. She insists that as many as possible of her charges spend as much time as they can in the open air, ambling about, communing and grazing contentedly in the paddocks. This is a time-consuming routine (i.e.: expensive), which is, maybe, why it’s unusual in most yards, but the benefits were obvious from the way the unfancied Mon Mome romped up to the finish at Aintree last weekend, still fresh and full of running after four and half miles.

It must, of course, have been an experience overflowing with dreamlike qualities for Liam Treadwell, the young winning jockey in his first National ride (and that jolliest of hockey-sticks, Clare Balding even apologised to him afterwards for making him display his less than pretty dental arrangements to the millions of viewers.)

But this was the 13th time Venetia had sent out a runner, no doubt with her usual professional pragmatism about the possible outcome. Her quiet dignity and lack of triumphalism over her unexpected win were in stark contrast to the excitability of the last (and only other) woman trainer to win the National – the rambunctious pudding known to the notoriously reliable John McCririck as the “Cuddly One”. (J. Francome, once asked on TV if Mrs Pitman really was cuddly, replied that she was “about as cuddly as a dead hedgehog.” I worked with her for two years, and I don’t know what he meant.)

My only regret over Mon Mome’s win was that I didn’t have a bet on either of Venetia’s runners, as I usually do because they often have a good chance, and because, secretly, I’ve always rather fancied her – which is as good a reason as any for backing a horse in the National.