SO NICE of the Beeb to allow us to watch the nuptials and the National.

But surely most of us would have been happy to make our own choice of tackling the Aintree fences with the connections of Amberleigh House rather than negotiating the final hurdle with the occupants of Clarence House.

A delay of 25 minutes to the start of the world's greatest steeplechase to accommodate that wretched Windsor wedding does not appear too significant, but it makes all the difference in the world to football fans.

The traditional 3.45pm start time to the big race coincided approximately with the half-time whistle at soccer games throughout the land and allowed supporters to dash for the nearest telly or plant a portable radio or mobile phone to the ear to capture the drama from Aintree.

Now we will have to wait for the public address to provide the result, the bare facts that will not give us a clue where our selection bit the dust and whether it was ever in with a chance. Like most punters, mine rarely is.

During a lifetime love affair with the National, starting with a bike ride to the course and witnessing just four fences from a grassy bank, I have backed the winner just three times.

On no occasion was my studious analysis of the form a factor.

The first was when Freebooter went in at 10-1 over half a century ago carrying a tanner (two and a half pence) each way of my vast stipend from delivering groceries on a bike the size of a combine harvester.

The name, I was informed, meant a pirate and I was currently into Captain Blood with a ruler at playtimes.

It would be easy to say that my money weighed down the immortal Devon Loch a few years later, but my selection had parted company with his rider long before the Queen Mother's horse slipped up on the run-in.

No, my next success did not come until the great Red Rum's second win in 1974 - and that only after attending a Ginger McCain Press conference where he insisted `Rummy' was already past the post.

It was almost another 30 years before the bookies reluctantly handed something back after the success of Monty's Pass. I was entering Ladbrokes when an old dear accosted me and asked me to place her bet as she found the bookies' intimidating.

I considered it an omen and had a couple of quid on the nose of her selection. Needless to say it finished a furlong ahead of my choice, the result of a good two hours searching analysis.

On Saturday, I will desert Ginger in his bid for a fifth winner as I consider Amberleigh House too old at 13 and go for Clan Royal, not because of any vague connection with that vexed union down south, but because Jonjo O'Neill deserves a change of luck after a blighted season and jockey Tony McCoy is as good as there ever was,

So there you have one entry that need not come into anyone's calculations. I mean, my luck is such that I would even have bet with a minute to go that City would win a match last Saturday and look what happened.

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