Collateral damage when Peter Walwyn took a swing back at a stable lad

Some of my favourite moments in Lambourn came when calling at Windsor House to see the late Peter Walwyn and his wife, Bonk, as he wound down his training career and then went into “retirement”.

Everyone is in such a desperate hurry these days there are very few I would drop in on without advance warning but the Walwyns had time for everyone. The welcome was unfailingly generous, fun and the chat usually hilarious.

Of course, most of the obituaries for “Big Pete” last week were wholly biographical, but he was so much more than that and such a rich source of material for this column, whether it was about his mole-catching endeavours or the time, during the course of a rousing pro-hunting speech in an agricultural museum, when he fell and impaled himself on an antique implement.

The hospital still has nightmares about the mayhem he caused using his phone to run his yard from bed in the days when the signal from a mobile could set off a whole range of life-saving equipment in intensive care.

Everyone has their Big Pete stories and, naturally, several centred around Grundy. Walking Epsom before the 1975 Derby, the trainer and his assistant, Mark Smyly, met a gypsy at Tattenham Corner. She proceeded to read Smyly’s palm and, after a while, came to her conclusion. “You’re going on a long journey,” she said.

“You’re absolutely right,” the trainer concurred. “He’s going to Catterick on Monday.”

One of the great Derby stories was the celebratory party which was in full flow at Walwyn’s yard when a police car screeched to a halt, spraying gravel everywhere.

“What’s going on here?” asked Walwyn as the police burst in.

“You’re being burgled,” said the officer.

“I don’t think we are,” said Walwyn “but while you’re here…”

The subsequent investigation found that Pat Eddery, the winning jockey, while ensuring that the nanny shared something in common with Grundy upstairs, had accidentally pressed the Walwyn’s bedside panic alarm.

Pete’s driving was also legendary and Bonk made him promise he would never call her on his mobile from the wheel (at a time when it was allowed.) She was, therefore, surprised to take a call one day when he was meant to be driving.

“Pete,” she protested, “you promised never to call me from the car.”

“I am in the car,” he admitted, “but I’m in it on the back of a pick-up truck. I’ve already had the accident.”

Long-serving secretary Lucy Lewis witnessed the show-stealer, however, when Jessica Harrington’s late husband, Johnny, a noted bloodstock agent, was staying. Outside, a stable lad had punched one of the head lads and, in the ensuing commotion, another lad, a stable lads’ boxing champion, had frog-marched the culprit to the office by the scruff of the neck.

Walwyn was giving the offender a dressing down, telling him such behaviour would not be tolerated, when the lad took a swing at the trainer. Bonk arrived just as Walwyn, in defence of himself, swung at the lad, missed and completed a 360-degree pirouette.

However, in slamming the door behind her in her rush from the house, she managed to shut Harrington’s head in it and, as in all the best farces, it was the innocent party who was the most injured.

The tables turned

Things are afoot in the world of boutique bloodstock insurance companies, and Jim Wordsworth’s Anglo-Hibernian agency, which operates out of Newmarket’s high street, has been bought by Global Risk Partners. Wordsworth, one of Newmarket’s more entertaining personalities, will continue to run it.

Anglo-Hibernian came about when Wordsworth asked for a pay rise at his previous job. They refused so he said he would set up on his own and, famous last words, they said “you have neither the brains nor the balls”.

He was going to call it something similar but was told a bloodstock agency of that name had left debts all over Newmarket and, though there would be a queue of people knocking on his door, it would almost certainly not be to have their horses insured.

Not long afterwards, Sheikh Mohammed decided to insure all his stallions for the first time. Dubai Millennium pretty promptly dropped dead. The Sheikh was paid out within the week and it sealed Wordsworth’s reputation.

Unfortunately for the market and Wordsworth, he stopped insuring his stallions after one year.