IF I was a cool kid, I’d have spent my teenage years listening to The Undertones and obsessing about girls, like normal adolescents. The truth is that the first music album I ever bought was a Chris de Burgh compilation and I spent a lot less time thinking about the opposite sex than daydreaming of riding a winner at Cheltenham and Aintree. I’d like to say that sheer bad luck derailed that particular dream, but it was potatoes that did most of the damage.

I wasn’t unhappy that my primary ambition was doomed to failure, as finding the Grand National winner was almost as exciting and, in the era before Cheltenham towered over all, the focus on unearthing the next Aintree hero was relentless. Every year hatched a new dream to brighten those long winter nights, and I cherished the opportunity to build up my hopes into the spring.

I was more devoted to these nascent legends of the sport than any lad was to the prettiest girl in school, and just as fickle as any thwarted paramour when plans went awry, so with a little help from Derry’s finest troubadours, here is a brief summary of my misspent teenage years.

Girls who don’t talk

Before I hit adolescence, I was devoted to one horse and one alone. Spartan Missileheld my heart from the time he landed the Foxhunters’ in 1978 until his last Aintree outing in 1984. I’ve had plenty of passing fancies at Aintree over the years and some who I remember with fondness, but Spartan Missile beat Elizabeth Donaghy comfortably to become my first true love. It could have been different, though; Elizabeth once sat next to me in P3, but made it clear that it wasn’t by design, and that she didn’t want any of my chat. Harsh.

Smarter than you

“I’m a little intellectual.

Someone who knows it all.”

West Tip was the connoisseur’s choice for the 1985 National, and I – a connoisseur – knew it. The ideal type for the National, he’d won two good races just before the race closed and scored twice more after the publication of the weights, with his win in the Ritz Club Chase at Cheltenham in March proving him to be an absolute handicap snip.

On top of that, he would have the assistance of Richard Dunwoody, who had emerged in the previous 18 months as the most promising young jump jockey seen in decades. I spotted young Dunwoody giving the hair-raising Von Trappe (like West Tip, trained by Michael Oliver) a brilliant ride to finish second to Glyde Court in a Cheltenham novice chase in January and told da I’d discovered the next champion jockey.

West Tip went like the winner every yard of the way in 1985 until overjumping at Becher’s on the second lap, when cantering alongside Corbiere. It was the teenage kick in the teeth I didn’t need at a time when I thought I’d got a grip of the great game.

As an aside, I found myself sitting next to Richard Dunwoody’s mother Gillian at a Cheltenham restaurant table many years later, and she challenged the diners to name his first Cheltenham winner. I was in my element, recalling Von Trappe reverting to timber to win the Coral Golden Hurdle, and that kicked off a thoroughly enjoyable conversation. Like little Miss Donaghy 20 years before, she didn’t ask to be sat beside me, but at least she made the most of it.

Jump boys

“Jump boys are crazy, they don’t have no sense. Never getting lost in coincidence.”

That line might have been written for Kevin Doolan, who remounted Dudie (a horse whose bold but reckless jumping had Tony Mullins calling a cab at multiple fences a year earlier) after a fall at the first big ditch in 1986, only to succumb to Becher’s three fences later. Not getting lost in coincidence was Richard Dunwoody, who had no concerns about that fence on West Tip, who made up for his 1985 tumble in perfect style, beating Young Driver with the pair a mile clear.

West Tip, who famously survived a collision with a lorry as a young horse, was very much a moral winner in my book, for all I’d not backed him. How could I with only one dart when the gorgeous Door Latch was in the race? I had the softest of soft spots for the Jim Joel-owned Door Latch, with his huge white face an immediate attraction, although winning the SGB twice in a row helped too, and had he not beaten West Tip and Burrough Hill Lad for the second of those two wins?

I settled down to enjoy nine minutes of Door Latch at his brilliant best, but came down to earth, as did he, at the very first fence. John Hanmer softened the blow by suggesting he’d been brought down, but he hadn’t. At least Richard Rowe wasn’t crazy enough to remount, and the jockey just sauntered across to a spot near the winning post where he could enjoy the finish. Which is more than I could do.

Let’s talk about girls

In the mid-80s I came around to the idea that a female jockey might win the Grand National and Caroline Beasley and Eliogarty had beaten the men in the 1986 Foxhunters’ to suggest the participation of women in the great race was no longer to be treated as a novelty.

If there was a rider to make the breakthrough in 1987, I reckoned, it was Gee Armytage, who rode the former Arthur Moore-trained Troytown winner The Ellier to win the Kim Muir at Cheltenham and arrived at Aintree with the bit between her teeth and her mount’s name on my ante-post slip.

Sadly, Gee was crocked on the opening day of the Aintree meeting after a fall in the Topham and was replaced initially by Mark Dwyer and then Frank Berry when Dwyer broke a wrist on Friday. I’m not sure anyone asked Frank if he actually wanted a ride in the National or whether he was just in the wrong place at the wrong time, but The Ellier was held up a long way off the pace before finishing with a flourish for seventh. Winner Maori Venture (pronounced Mayoree in our house) was one of Da’s favourite chasers of all time, so I decided to feel happy for him instead. Deciding to feel happy for someone else is VERY hard to pull off, I found.

Family entertainment (will come to an end)

1988 was the last time I watched the Grand National with my father before I left home and, aside from the rare occurrence of us both cheering home the winner for the first time since Red Rum, there is another connection between that and my first National, which I only discovered when going through some old newspapers in the attic years later.

Rhyme ‘N’ Reason, hero of that race, won a maiden hurdle at Dundalk in July 1983 when trained by Jeremy Maxwell and ridden by Harold Kirk, the stable’s amateur rider at the time. Just half an hour later, a 14-year-old Andy Pandy reappeared briefly from obscurity to take his final curtain call under rules; in doing so, he was neatly - if enigmatically - tying the ribbon on the Aintree experience I shared with Da. It’s a gift I wouldn’t swap for the world.