Down on the day

Nothing can deter the chairman from making his annual pilgrimage to Cheltenham - not even Gordon Brown

"What have you got for the next race?" asked the chairman of the insignificantly-sized investment company SmallBluePlanet. "Misgivings," I said, sadly eyeing the space in my wallet where my betting stash had once been. "Same as in the last race and the race before that and the race before that. The way these horses are running, as best as I can figure it, somebody must be tipping them off that I have bet on them before each race starts." As you will no doubt have worked out, because you were probably there, the chairman and I had, in common with most of Her Majesty's financial services...