The Noble Lord

I was in my teens when I first began to take an interest in horse racing. Watching it on television was something of a law at the stables where I worked as a Saturday Girl. Once the jobs were done there was a sprint to the television to catch as many races as we could before settling the horses in for the night. Back then, there was no catch up TV, and no Channel 4 +1 so if the boss had gone Hunting, I had the task of pressing the “record” button on the VHS to ensure the races could be viewed that evening.  At that time on Channel 4 Racing, one of the presenters was this lovely trilby-wearing old bloke who the infamous “Big Mac” (John McCririck) used to call My Noble Lord. One Saturday afternoon I watched The Noble Lord stand on top of a crane, remove his glasses and perform a bungee jump to raise money for The Injured Jockey’s Fund. It turns out that this old bloke was a gentleman called John Oaksey, or to give him his full title, John Geoffrey Tristram Lawrence, 4th Baron Trevethin and 2nd Baron Oaksey OBE.

And to put it mildly; he was quite something.

Born on 21^st March 1929 he was the son of Geoffrey Lawrence, 1^st Baron Oaksey and his wife Marjorie. John attended Eton College, did his National Service at Catterick, went to Oxford and read Philosophy, Politics and Economics and then went to Yale to study Law.

Having ridden since he was a child he had his first ride in a Point to Point aged 24 and enjoyed his first winner a year later. He went on be to British Champion Amateur Jump Jockey twice in 1957-58 and again in 1970-71. He rode in the Grand National 11 times, completed the course on 4 occasions and was close to winning in 1963 on Carrickbeg, having led over the last fence only to be beaten by ¾ of a length. In 1958 riding Taxidermist, he won the Whitbread Gold Cup and the Hennessy Gold Cup and when he finally hung up his breeches after being injured in a fall at Folkestone in 1975, he had ridden 200 winners in total.

Riding as an amateur jockey the rules state that you must have another occupation; and Lord Oaksey was a journalist, writing as a racing correspondent for the Daily Telegraph and also as a columnist for Horse & Hound. Once after being knocked out in a fall in the Grand National he insisted on filing his copy for the Sunday Telegraph before being carried off on a stretcher.

Enough, do you think? If you had achieved the catalogue of achievements listed above, would you be happy? I certainly would.

Lord Oaksey did something else too; he founded the Injured Jockeys Fund.

The Charity began as the Farrell-Brookshaw Fund in 1964 after John Oaksey’s fellow jockeys Tim Brookshaw and Paddy Farrell suffered falls on the racetrack which resulted in paralysis. It later became the Injured National Hunt Jockey’s Fund before finally becoming the Injured Jockeys Fund (IJF) and thus embracing all areas of the sport. Lord Oaksey was the President and Figurehead of the Charity and there is a statue of him outside the Lambourn rehabilitation centre which is called Oaksey House. The IJF has helped over 1000 jockeys and their families since it began and it celebrated the opening of Jack Berry House (another rehabilitation centre) in Malton on 20^th April this year.

Although Lord Oaksey was a charming and charismatic television presenter he was no tipster and he once received a letter from a disgruntled punter which read “Dear Bastard, I am writing to tell you that you could not tip more rubbish if Channel 4 bought you a forklift truck.” I am sure he would have laughed long and hard at that.

Up until a few years before he died he was often on the racecourse, wrapped up against the chill of the English Winter, selling Christmas cards and calendars in aid of the Injured Jockeys Fund. His health was not good in later years and when he penned his autobiography in 2003 he was already suffering from the early signs of Alzheimer’s. By 2011 John was very ill and in an emotional win, his horse Carruthers who he had bred and partially owned, won the Hennessy, 53 years after John had piloted Taxidermist to victory in the same race.

Lord Oaksey died on 5^th September 2012, he was 83.

So why am I telling you all this? Because I watched some lovely old bloke do a bungee jump, it took about 30 seconds and it was on television 20 something years ago. And I remember it most vividly, to this day. Perhaps even as an ignorant teenager, I had an inkling that he was a very special man.