Michael laughs off bad breaks

Tebbutt was his target, as West Brom beat Sunderland 2-1 the previous weekend and the arrow goes home. "Go on, you bastard rub it in," he said to much glee from Curry.

"If you can't get a laugh and a kick out of this game, then you shouldn't be in it," is another of Tebbutt's mottos as he recalled an injury which could have put him out of racing.

He said: "I had an accident where I broke a bone in my spine and was in Salisbury Hospital's back injury ward.

"When I came too, I was put opposite a young guy, who asked me how I had sustained my injury. I then asked him how he had got his. It transpired that he was a pneumatic driller who had gone through a gas main and the blast had shattered his arm.

"I asked why he was in the back ward, and he replied that the explosion had blown him up a tree and when he regained consciousness fell out of it on his head and broke his back. I realised then that I had little to be down about."

The son of a biology teacher, Tebbutt served most of his time as a claiming rider with Chris Thornton at Middleham before moving to Newmarket where he saw out his apprenticeship with Willie Jarvis. He also rode on the gallops for Lester Piggott who, by then, had turned to training. Jarvis is still one of his main employers, along with Michael Jarvis, who is no relation to Willie, and Ed Dunlop.

Of Piggott, Tebbutt said: "He is a strange man. He is armed with so much knowledge, but seldom passes it on.

"During my time riding work for him he only gave me one piece of advice. I had been leading six two-year-olds on an older horse on the gallops, and at the end he asked me how a certain chestnut had gone. I told him I hadn't seen it, being up front of them, and he said: 'You must see everything. You've got to have eyes in your arse'."

Strangely for a Flat jockey, Tebbutt rode Platinum Blonde, his first winner, in a National Hunt bumper race at Cartmel.

He has learned the hard way. When he was a 7lb claimer he dared to come up the inside of tough northern jockey Johnny Seagrave and was bounced off every post and rail for a mile and a half for his cheekiness.

His broad smile disguises the fact that four of his original front teeth are buried on Folkestone's bottom bend. "If anyone ever finds them, I would like them back please," he joked.

The County Durham rider hit a golden streak when he rode for trainer Brian Meehan - the pair winning nine Group events - with such horses as Tumbleweed Ridge, Easycall and Tomba, the latter taking Royal Ascot's Cork & Orrery in

With 42 winners on the Flat last term and £325,000 in prize and place money won by his mounts, it was a healthy campaign, and he is in the top 10 of jockeys on the all-weather so far this season.

Being active for almost all of the year, the miles on the road can be more wearing than actually riding horses, so Teb-butt has to take a well-earned break when he can.

The natural raconteur has plenty of material to work on after a week's break skiing in France with such colleagues as Steve Drowne, Philip Robinson, Alan Daly and Brett Doyle.

"We'll were on the piste in more ways than one," laughed Tebbutt.

"It was great to sail down the slopes of Alp D'Huez without a care in the world. We only had one slight accident.

"Ian Lawrence, one of the valets who went with us, cut his nose. But then valets are always poking their noses in!"

1998.