Long Run then, the RSA Chase favourite, what do you make of him? The best thing since the thing that was the best thing before sliced bread came along and ruined it for all the good things, according to the majority of people who generally know about these things; a stalactite perched precariously on the precipice, if you ask the silent minority, or those for whom alliteration is king.

Incidentally, on the whole sliced bread thing, there have been many good things since sliced bread – the internet and Sinndar in the Irish Derby to name but two, and I’m not sure that the telex didn’t come along after they managed to split the bread – and surely one of them was a better thing than Peter Lyons’s finest. I’m not even fully convinced that the sliced pan is that good a thing. Give me a batch loaf that you can get a knife at and cut as thick as you like before smothering it with a couple of lumps of butter and a spoonful of raspberry jam any day.(more…)