Good things in the morning. The clatter of trays and the smell of bacon. The gurgle of coffee being poured. The tinkle of cups. Makes you know what it was like to be Pavlov's dog.

Bacon and coffee in the air and the first light of the day slanting through the window. Tail wagging wildly yet? Scrambled eggs of sunshine yellow bordered by mushrooms of pewter. Soft, warm bread rolls, scented like goodness itself, piled on linen and guarded by squares of golden butter. Is the dribbly tongue hanging out of your chops yet? The orange juice has the flesh of new squeezed fruit floating in it. Stop.

Tony McCoy waves it away with a barely discernible movement of his finger. He turns his head and looks out the plane's plexiglass window. Closes his eyes and sleeps the rest of the flight from Belfast to Birmingham.

One is reminded of the old journalist story about the hack who submitted amidst his expenses dockets a receipt for a Big Mac meal and two kiddies Happy Meals. The accounts department queried him.

"Ah yes. Dinner with Lester Piggot and Scoby Breesly." Racing life is like that, spartan, unsparing and a few happy meals in between. McCoy's frame is big for a jockey and he must hang as little flesh as possible from it. His weight hovers just a few despised pounds above 10 stone. His height has stopped at just an inch under six foot. Since the age of 15 when he broke a leg and put on two stone he has been at war with his body. He passes his days off by stewing himself in a bath filled with water as hot as his body can bear. Breaks the monotony of steam rooms.

"I wouldn't think too much of sweating seven or eight pounds off in a morning," he says. "Has to be done."

It's not that he doesn't like to eat. "I love to eat. If I have three days off first thing I'll do is have a good meal."

Feel guilty afterwards?

"Mmmm. Never guilty. Just heavy. Really heavy."

Friday night. Saturday morning. Scenes from the life. Things which have to be done. He rides the winner in the last at Doncaster, winner number 204 of the season. He boards a helicopter and heads for East Midlands airport, which is smothered in fog. Switches to Leeds/Bradford. Flies to Belfast, drives to Ballymena, launches his autobiography. Sleeps for three-and-a-half hours. Flies to Birmingham. Walks through the airport without so much as an overnight bag in his grip. Taxis to Warwick. Sweats three pounds in the sauna. Rides winners Number 205 and 206 in the late afternoon. Twenty-three and living fast.

So this is Saturday and since Thursday he has fuelled himself on a slice of turkey, a bottle of water, a diet coke and a Kit Kat. The breakfast trolley trundles off. Tony McCoy sleeps on.

At Warwick an hour later the scene is English pastoral. The town and its racecourse nestle in a fold of midlands hills. Sun floods the weigh-room, picking out the dust motes in the air and giving the scene the quality of an oil painting. The walls are buttermilk yellow lined with racing green and the place is scented with leather. Over the jockeys' benches the saddles and the stirrups hang from on high, the metal pieces glinting brightly in the wan light. Silks, riding hats and whips hang from hooks. Around the table in the middle the valets are playing poker.

"Morning all," says the champion jockey.

"Tone," they shout back, lifting their heads from their losing hands, "you're an early bird this morning."

"Aye," says McCoy, rolling his eyes, "too early for sensible men." Easy familiarity. No distance between them.

"No room for egos in here," says McCoy later when you ask. "You're only ever a mistake away from having your backside in the mud."

It's the relationship between trainers, owners and the jockeys which is strained slightly. The formality of it is odd. The jockeys nipping out to be introduced to the owners and listening to small talk before they hoist 10 stone of skin and bone atop half a ton of horse flesh and head off for a trip which, if it doesn't end in triumph or tragedy, will yield a straight £85, out of which the jockey pays the agent, the valets and the taxman.

McCoy has an easy way about him which soothes horses and people easily. In Ballymena, the night before, Willie Rock has been buzzing about the place as the tributes were paid.

In the weigh-room McCoy is the big man, or one of them at least. In Willie Rock's world he is still Wee Auntany. Rock was the first in a line of hard men who have been charmed.

"He always had a lovely way about him did wee Auntany," says Rock, "we were always happy to see him."

Rock kept his horses at Culleybacky seven miles away from the McCoys of Moneyglass. Peadar McCoy was a joiner and Clare McCoy a shopkeeper. Reared among hard-working stock, lifts to the Rock place were few and far between. McCoy went once a fortnight until he bought a bike and set his imagination to the racing game. The mitching started not long after.

"Aye. It was a bit of a case of shit or bust for me with the racing when it came down to it," he says. "I don't think I legally mitched. I don't think it got so bad that we were in trouble with the law, but I didn't go that often."

Why not?

"Ach, I just wouldn't. I made up all sorts of excuses. I know sometimes I just refused. I never really liked it. Now I wish I had stayed a bit longer alright. Nothing can be done now. I just used to hate going. I did anything to get out of it. I hadn't much else going for me but horses. I played a lot of Gaelic football, but the horses was what I was going to do."

In Willie Rock's place life unfolded like a Hollywood script. They put the wee mon up on the wild ones and he calmed them beneath him. "I was never scared. I never knew to be scared. That made it easier. Even when I couldn't have been in control I thought I was."

One horse tore through a hedge, instead of over it, leaving Wee Auntany stranded on top. Others tossed him and bucked him. Most were simply seduced.

He went on to harder task masters, an apprenticeship with Jim Bolger, a start with Toby Baldwin becoming eventually the top freelance in Martin Pipe's quiver. Rare is the bad word which is spoken about Tony McCoy. In one celebrated incident a trainer insulted him after he declined to ride one of his horses.

"I know everyone thinks they're right," says McCoy, "but I know I wasn't wrong. If I saw him coming toward me now I'd turn and walk the other way. I wouldn't be seen within a mile of him. Things were said."

Tony McCoy shakes his head. The trainer has lost here. Man cuts off nose to spite face! Then there are those whom Tony McCoy calls the `higher ups', the people who run racing. They are a mystery to him, doing things "just to keep feeling higher up than you". They sent him a letter recently about excessive use of the whip. He didn't like it, but he heeded it. Better than being suspended for Cheltenham

Race day. He is well used to the aching hollowness in the pit of his belly early on race mornings. Yet this morning he has 3lbs to lose in the sauna. Hunger remains his silent companion.

This morning, a Saturday, he is tired, dog-tired, and it is the want of sleep which occupies him. He is white like a wraith above the colour of his bespoke suit, he has stolen what shuteye he could above the drone of the jet engines but fatigue is written on his face.

This is the morning after the night before. Five-hundred people, mostly friends and family, have gathered in a big hotel in Ballymena to give the launch of his autobiography the feel of a big country wedding. McCoy has lingered to the small hours, sipping diet Coke and listening to old stories

Tender years for launching an autobiography and wisely The Real McCoy is subtitled My Life So Far. The aggregate of 23 summers does not a doorstep epic make, but McCoy's ghost writer must have worried more about which parts of this ripping yarn to leave out.