The fruity language, the alliterative and slightly scatty prose style, the touch of name-dropping, the whiff of irreverence, the rumbling sense that life did not necessarily keep all its promises. Many of the anecdotes related that night have been recorded in Football Memories (Virgin Books, pounds 16.99), which, as the title indicates, is not a conventional autobiography, more a colourful and not necessarily chronological romp through a varied football life. Reading it is rather like rummaging through the attic of a stately home. He has done his time, but London is his more regular beat these days, now that he has returned to his spiritual home at the Sunday Times.
We spent a happy few hours late last year, trundling back through the darkness after a drab 0-0 draw between Blackburn and Newcastle It was a surprise to find Brian so far north. One of the least appealing aspects of a Saturday sports writer’s job is the long trek back to town from northern games. The train networks are not at their best, the local Pink’ Un is about the pinnacle of literary aspirations and Nuneaton is generally the cue for a chorus of “Stand up if you hate Man U” from a posse of southern supporters. Good company is essential at such times and the presence of Brian Glanville, hunched, mischievious and, particularly if the game has been poor, wickedly acerbic, is always guarantee that the evening will not be void. Peter Niven and the lads on the Northern circuit are a great bunch But then, I have been lucky all the way The Swans, the Hughses, and now I’ve always been with good people.”.
Cab On Target (“it’s a privilege to ride a horse like him, to win would be unbelievable”) will be one of several mounts during the week, others have yet to be specified. A year ago he was planning to watch the Festival on television.He is very conscious of having fallen on his feet in riding for the Reveley stable. “The horses are all beautifully done, they all jump well and they’ve mostly got a winning chance, which gives you great confidence,” he said “And there’s no pressure. If things don’t work out they don’t work out, but nine times out of 10 they do. Victory at the Festival would be of the roof-raising variety.The Kim Muir, over three miles and a furlong, was the race in which a certain young Mr Maguire burst upon the British scene eight years ago by winning on Omerta, and Dempsey would not at all object to emulating him on the biggest stage of all.But in truth, he will be happy just to be there. The gentlemanly old horse, now 13, was a top-class performer in his palmy days and still has a sizeable fan club.
Right now Dempsey, his dark grey eyes alight with anticipation, is counting the days until Tuesday fortnight, when he will team up with his favourite horse, the marvellous veteran Cab On Target, in the Fulke Walwyn/Kim Muir Chase, one of the two contests at the Festival confined to amateurs.Cab On Target has already done Dempsey an enormous favour by giving him his first winner at Cheltenham, over the Kim Muir course and distance back in October. Dempsey has only four winners to go until he loses his right to claim 3lb, after which he will be an amateur in name only. His target this season is his divisional title; win or lose that he will turn pro at the start of the new jumping season in June.But that, along with the problems and pressures it will bring, is in the future. I’m gaining experience all the time, riding the different horses and the different courses. But then in this job you’re learning until the day you stop.”Amateurs and conditional jockeys are given a weight allowance, that decreases in inverse proportion to the number of winners ridden, to offset their inexperience and encourage trainers to use them. After No More Hassle fell at the last with the race won at Huntingdon on Thursday he admitted: “I asked him for a big jump, but it was a bit slippy and he put down instead of picking up He’s only a novice, and I should have realised.
Callaghan sent the word back across the water, Dempsey asked trainer and pundit Ted Walsh to mention him favourably to Reveley. His record passed muster and he arrived at Saltburn last June.Since then he has been given the opportunity to show what he can do and has taken it with both hands. Although she is self-effacing to the point of invisibility Mary Reveley is a most astute judge of both a horse and a rider and her opinion that her new protege is “a very good tidy horseman who uses his head” should be enough of a seal of approval for anyone.Dempsey does very little that is obviously, horribly wrong, and if he does make a mistake he acknowledges, analyses and benefits. And then, at 16, a transfer to full- time work in Kildare with the trainer Dessie Hughes, to whom Swan, many- times Irish champion, was first jockey at the time.Dempsey rode 27 winners in four and a half years with Hughes, 24 of which were in bumper races against fellow amateurs. His was a promising, but static, career and he needed, like many before him, to get the break of a job in Britain.A chance meeting on a train was the catalyst that brought the ticket to ride across the Irish Sea to the Cleveland coast. His friend and compatriot Eddie Callaghan was sharing the delights of the Great North-Eastern railway journey from Yorkshire to Edinburgh with senior jockey Peter Niven, who happened to mention that his stable – that of Mary Reveley – was looking for an improving young type. First, the responsibility of hunting the young horses in his early teens.
