I've been spending quite a while going through the form of the forthcoming Cheltenham Festival races (March 16-19), as the occasional pang of regret surfaces when I realise that I won't be personally involved any more.

For years I covered major horse races in Britain as a commentator, journalist, form analyst or betting correspondent.


Naively, I thought that I would be able to help those good souls trying to establish a professional racing industry in Israel onto the right path. I tried very hard for two and a half year, meeting potential investors, government ministers, the European Union ambassador, the chairman of this government body, the manager of that government body.

With the exception of the charming Ramiro Cibrian, the EU ambassador to Israel until recently, nobody really offered any genuine support. Cibrian, a keen as mustard racing fan for many years went out of his way to do what he could to move things forward. It's a shame that he was the only one who genuinely understood what was required and truly wanted to help.

So from 2000 miles away my mind is concentrated on the championship races at Cheltenham. I've already passed on my early advice to back Punjabi (10/1) for the Champion Hurdle. My other recommendations are to back Alaivan (6/1) in the Triumph Hurdle, Long Run (5/1) in the RSA Chase and the charmingly named Forpadydeplasterer (16/1) in the Ryanair Chase. If they all win, I'll be buying a holiday home in the Caribbean and be too busy living a life of luxury to blog on a regular basis.

All of a sudden I can hear prayers around the nation and beyond hoping those horses win! Charming.

Horses do sometimes have very curious names. Some of them are very informative, being named after historical figures, places of interest, Latin names for plants. You name it, there's a horse been named after it.

The days are long gone when racehorses had simple names like Brown Lad or Red Rum. Looking at the list of weirdly named probable runners in this season’s Champion Hurdle, (Dunguib, Solwhit, Medermit, Zaynar) cast my mind back to the origins of a curiously named horse of yesteryear.

It isn’t easy naming a horse as so many names have already been used in the past and there is a time limit of around 20 years before names can be used again. Many horses get their names through an amalgam of sire and dam’s name, whilst others are given a name that might be personal to the owner.

About 30 years ago, I remember sitting at home watching the good old BBC racing presented by ferret-faced Julian Wilson, on a day when a high class hurdler called Kybo had romped home for trainer Josh Gifford.

Posh public schoolboy Wilson introduced Kybo’s owner, a jolly, outgoing sort of a bloke, with a very obviously Jewish name – I can't remember if he was a Levy, a Cohen, Greenberg, Bernstein or Yankelovich, but he was clearly ‘over the moon’ at his charge’s victory. After asking the obligatory questions about what had been expected and where does he go next, Wilson then took it upon himself to discover the root of the unusual name Kybo.

Taking up the reins, the owner explained that he had been sent away to boarding school and through his first term always received a letter from his mother which ended ‘With Love, Mum. PS. K.Y.B.O’. Puzzled by the acronym, he waited until going home for Christmas to ask his mum just what this Kybo stood for.

At this point, a smiling and clearly fascinated Wilson was eager to hear more. ‘Well’ said the owner, already laughing, ‘Mum turned round to me in shock, and after expressing disbelief that I didn’t know, spelled it out – Keep Your Bowels Open!’

The look on Julian Wilson’s face was worth more than a thousand words as he hurriedly linked to the runners and riders for the next race, where Peter O’Sullevan was still chuckling.

Some things you’re just better off not knowing!

There are some devious racehorse owners who give their animals names that are deliberately designed to get the commentator tongue-tied or cause embarrassment. I once had a horrible moment with a horse call Pheasant Plucker, and also managed to get my consonants in a twist when announcing the runners for the Thirsk Hunt Cup!

Try saying Honourable Admiral repeatedly in a close finish and you too might just struggle. Years ago, following a successful advertising campaign using the same slogan, I was stuck having to call home a horse called 'Scchh..Youknowwho'.  I also remember causing audible hoots of laughter from the crowd at Market Rasen when unintentionally I noted that "Lucy Lastic has been pulled up".

One of my commentating colleagues used to roll his 'r's and I remember crying with laughter hearing him screaming home a horse called First Rank repeatedly in a photo-finish.

There are stacks of stories I could tell about the escapades of the commentating fraternity, but one of my favourite is about the late Raleigh Gilbert, a direct relatively of the also rather late Sir Walter Raleigh.

Raleigh was an English public school type, very well spoken with a beautiful voice. He had a penchant for red shirts and tweed jackets and I suspect probably liked a drop or two of the 'hard stuff'. He was noted for meticulous preparation and in the days before the Internet, like us all, he had to spend hours drawing the colours of the jockeys riding in the races the following day.

After finishing his commentary shift at Newbury one afternoon, Raleigh decided to stay up in the crows' next commentary box on top of the grandstand and prepare his colours for the next day. It was only when daylight had well and truly faded that the old boy realized he had better be getting home.

He packed his bag and headed for the door only to find the box had been locked without him noticing. Apparently he tried for some while to pick the lock, then attempted to use brute force, but nothing would release the handle.

By now it was pitch black, there were no mobile phones and it was more than a little nippy. The story in the next day's Sporting Life reported that a cleaning lady in the tea bar under the main grandstand was going about her business when she heard this plummy upper class voice echoing from above. ''Er hello. Is there anybody there. This is Raleigh Gilbert. I'm the commentator. Hello, is there anybody there. I'm locked in the commentary box."

The cleaning lady didn't even know what a commentary box was.

The voice echoing through the Berkshire darkness gradually became more and more agitated as the old boy realized that he might have to stay there until the next fixture thee weeks later. Eventually the lady managed to contact the racecourse manager who eventually managed to free the part-frozen TV personality who by this point was a little more than desperate to avail himself of the facilities.

I can't match that one, but on my one and only TV spot at Taunton racecourse, my director sent me up onto the corrugated iron roof of an old stand as there were "no distractions" there. It was only when I was half way across the roof a piece gave way underfoot that the crew realized the building had been condemned and I had to be rescued with a long ladder.

Those were the days.

 
 
Last Saturday I received a phone call telling me that my sister's father-in-law had suffered a stroke and was in critical condition. He lay motionless in a special care unit in Beilinson Hospital in Petah Tiqva for three days before passing away peacefully on Tuesday morning.

Eliyahu (Eli) Ruhan was a lovely man. He was gentle, good humoured, modest, a true family man whose sole mission in life was to do the best he could for Rita, his wife of 46 years, their four children and 11 grandchildren. Eli welcomed me into his home when I first moved to Israel in 1997 as a new immigrant and though we spoke no common language (he spoke no English and I very little Hebrew) I felt the warmth of his personality and his hospitality, as one former new immigrant to another.

Eli was born in Baghdad, a Sephardi Jew, from a family who had lived and prospered in Iraq for generations. Shortly after the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, the Jews of Iraq, like many others in the Middle East and North Africa, found themselves being persecuted and were forced to flee. Eli's family left behind a privileged lifestyle and came to Israel in the early 1950's where they lived in a depressing tented village for a number of years. Eli's father, humbled by his change of circumstances, never recovered and died soon after arriving in his new homeland.

50 years later Eli was retired, having built a good life for himself and his family through sheer hard graft, originally labouring on building sites before going into the construction business and developing properties in and around Petah Tiqva. We shared a love of horses and he joined me on a number of times on trips to the races in England.

As a British Ashkenazi Jew, I had never attended a Sephardi funeral but was aware that there are significant differences in the way many Sephardi Jews express their grief. In the West we tend to be more reserved and grieve quietly, funerals in Britain normally accompanied by quiet sniffling, many a red eye and a feeling that one should be strong and not let the side down.

At Eli's funeral I could hear the wailing from some distances away. The sound grew louder and more tormented as I joined the approximately 300 mourners. It was heartbreaking to see Rita unable to comprehend that her man had been taken from her, his daughters both seemingly on the verge of collapse and his sons trying hard but failing to fight back the tears. After the burial, Rita, overcome with grief, threw herself onto the filled grave and had to be lifted away, Eli's daughters, bareley able to stand, were escorted back through the crowd, and one granddaughter close by me almost fainted and had to be revived with cold water.

The whole scene might, to those unaccustomed to such behaviour, appear to be melodramatic and over the top, but there is absolutely no doubt that the pain and grief were genuinely felt. The gradual increase in the level of the grieving caused the majority of those present to break down and cry (myself included), a kind of mild hysteria. You only have to think back to the death of Princess Diana to see that this phenomenon even reduced the British stiff upper lip to floods of communal tears.

Maybe it is better to let go of all the grief in one powerful outburst than to keep it welling up within. Maybe Elkie Brooks' 'You Don't Cry Out Loud' was, in hindsight, bad advice!

At least in Israel, and in nearly every other country in the world except for Britain, you can place flowers on the grave and visit a cemetery surrounded by trees and floral displays. The British Jews' insistence on no flowers and on cemeteries being completely bare of anything other than the gravestones is, to my mind, bordering on the cruel.

When I was younger I used to have an awful habit of hiding my public grief with sometimes barely disguised laughter. I know it sounds ridiculous, but something would trigger off a chuckle (you know, someone tripping over a gravestone or heading off in the wrong direction), and I would have to take a step to the back of the crowd.

Many years ago, back in England, an old and much loved great aunt of mine was being buried. After the rabbi had said a few words and Kaddish (the prayer for the dead) had been recited, there was a pause – complete silence as we all contemplated her passing. It was just at this very moment that a rather eccentric uncle of mine took a very theatrical sniff of the fresh air and declared "It's quiet here. I could live here."

Cue 'drop dead' looks from a number of mourners and a snort of hysterical laughter form yours truly.

Thinking back to poor Rita being so overcome with grief reminds me of a not dissimilar incident that occurred on my first ever visit to Israel in 1985. I was doing the tourist route around the Old City of Jerusalem and, having visited the Western Wall and had a wander up towards the Golden Dome Mosque, I felt I should cover all angles and take in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the place where it is believed Christ's body was buried. 

After having a look around the tremendously impressive building, I joined a very long queue of people waiting to take their turn at seeing the crypt area, where it is understood that the body was actually laid out. I doubt there can be a more holy place on earth for Christians. As we painfully slowly neared the entrance to the crypt, a short and decidedly rotund middle-aged lady in front of me started rattling her beads with ever more fervour whilst murmuring in Spanish. I nudged my friend and we both saw that she was, shall we say, a little on edge.

Those inside the crypt were only allowed a maximum of 30 seconds and when after disappearing inside she had not left for more than a minute, we began to wonder if everything was OK. Right on cue the security guard from within gestured to me and my pal to come inside, whereupon we found the Spanish lady had thrown herself onto the stone slab and was steadfastly refusing to release her grip whilst wailing in some unrecognisable tongue. 

We got the feeling that the guard had dealt with this scenario before. He told us each to grab a leg (hers, not his) and pull. It was a bit like a Christmas roast (but without any prospect of a wishbone) and, as we released her feet, he one by one scraped her fingers off the end of the stone and we hurriedly rushed her outside. The guard (without a word of thanks) then disappeared back from whence he came, leaving us with a 200lb hallucinating Spanish woman and not much idea of what to do with her. We soon solved the conundrum as only a further few yards away was a gaggle of other women of a certain age who apparently had undergone a similar experience only moments before. We left 'Our Lady of the Beads' to their good auspices. 

In hindsight it was funny, but there was little doubt that the Spanish lady's grief for the passing of her Lord nearly 2000 years previously was genuinely heartfelt. Hopefully, she felt better afterwards, getting it out of her system.

After today's emotional rollercoaster I am quite convinced that we should not look down on those who keep their emotions hidden, or those who feel the need to let it all come pouring out. It is surely best to do whatever comes naturally.