THE week after the November Sale, I was in London to conduct the auction at the Peter O’Sullevan lunch.

This is a significant gathering of racing patrons, professionals and enthusiasts and this year’s award went to John Gosden whose career has been a remarkable one.

Among his early stars was Royal Heroine, winner of the inaugural Breeders Cup Mile in 1984. The daughter of Lypheor had been bought as a yearling in 1981 at Goffs from Ballymorris Stud for 5,600gns.

Earlier in his career Gosden worked for Vincent O’Brien and he recalled his involvement with the 1977 Derby winner The Minstrel.

Gosden was given the task of being at the start to remove the cotton wool, placed in the colt’s ears to reduce the noise of the occasion.

He obviously scored 9/10 for the job in question as a film of his achievements had footage from the occasion which clearly showed the remnants of the material around the colt’s right ear after the race.

I was lucky enough to sit next to Frankie Dettori at lunch who recounted an amusing story about his first such function in London as a young champion apprentice.

At the time he had attended very few social occasions in England outside of Newmarket and was certainly not familiar with the custom, at such events, of the loyal toast, when everybody is invited to rise to their feet and toast the Queen.

SURREAL

While this is always a slightly surreal moment for those Irish attendees with strong 1916 associations, it completely confused Frankie, for whom English was still very much a second language. Frankie immediately thought, “Bloody hell, the Queen is here” and climbed onto his chair for a better chance of seeing her.

History does not relate whether this occasion called for Frankie’s trademark flying dismount.

The O’Sullevan lunch is the only award that I attend, as such invitations only come my way when an auctioneer is needed, but it is amazing how many awards the racing industry seems to spawn.

As I have mentioned before, perhaps there should be an overall award for the best awards function.

For an industry that is so aligned to weight management, there is also a certain irony, at Christmas time, in the almost daily feeding of those least in need.