TV View: Can it be only a year since we updated you on the whereabouts of Ginger McCain? 'Tis, though it's hard to credit.

"Nowadays you go in the weighing-room," he said of today's jockeys in an interview with the BBC ahead of the 2003 Grand National, "and it's like a bloody puff's paradise - they're all there on their bloody telephones and powdering their noses and their bums, and one thing or another."

"Just after the war," he'd continued, "you'd go in to a weighing-room and it was like going in to a gym, there was 'masculine-ness' and the smell of sweat and men and there would be a pee-bucket in the corner and it never got emptied until it was full, it might stand there 12 or 18 months."

"Aaaah," we'd concluded then, poignantly, while accepting, reluctantly, that Red Rum's other half was yesterday's man, his day was past (while at the same time expressing some relief that we'd moved on from the age when buckets of stagnant urine sat in the corner of jockeys' weighing-rooms).

In the build-up to Saturday's Grand National the Beeb treated us to a dash more of Ginger nostalgia, with Sue Barker grabbing a word with the auld rogue before race-time.

He talked of old Rummy like he was a deceased lover, told us he'd brought a dozen red roses to his grave that morning, but, for fear us viewers would suspect he was an auld softie, he quickly sighed: "The flowers probably cost more than the old horse did when he was bought as a yearling."

He told us, too, that he had a five-year-old filly in his stables "that's related to him" - "She's not worth a carrot, but I'm going to hang on to her because it keeps me with the family."

See, it's that class of talk that leaves some of us confused about these horsey folk. If they love these creatures that much, then Lordy, why oh why do they send them out to jump those Aintree fences? But time has taught us, there are oft no sensible answers to rational questions.

Anyway, Ginger reckons "do-gooders" have ruined the National, fiddling with death-defying fences to the point where they're as menacing as picket fences and now horses don't have to be men any more. Fillies don't either.

Not that Ginger's thoughts mattered too much, yesterday's man after all.

"You've got a chance with Amberleigh House," Sue said to him, kind-heartedly, in conclusion.

"I think we've got a very, very serious chance indeed," said Ginger.

Sue smiled. We smiled. Bless.

"He's not just fit, he's got a fine edge to him as well, and if he gets a clear run, luck in running . . . if five or six horses come across that Melling Road with chances and mine's amongst them I don't give a toss whether we win or lose, we've run a big race, it's Aintree, it's the Grand National and I'm delighted to be involved," said Ginger.

Sue smiled. We smiled. Bless.

Not all that long later Ginger was explaining how Amberleigh House had won the 2004 Grand National.

"He's a good sort of horse, he's professional, the best thing that's happened to me for a long, long time," he said, while Sue and ourselves scraped our jaws from the floor. Yesterday's man was, would you credit it, today's news.

"Ah, I think I'm too old for this," he lied, "but I'm very grateful to John (Halewood, the owner) for the opportunity. He said to me: 'Look, you're a doddery old bastard, it's time you won another National'." So Ginger won another National. Like you do.

And Rummy would have smiled down, if he wasn't fumigated by a dozen red roses, turning his paddock in the sky in to a "bloody puff's paradise".

Ginger was a happy man. As was Alex Ferguson.

"Aye, we're very pleased," he told Garth Crooks, nonchalantly, at the conclusion of Saturday's FA Cup semi-final.

What he meant to say, of course, was that this was probably the happiest day in his whole entire life, but he was intent on giving the impression that beating Arsenal was no more of a task than, say, opening a can of beans.

When he returned to the United changing-rooms one has to assume he presented his players with a bouquet of red roses, accompanied by a card that read: "Rumours of our demise have, bloody hell, been greatly exaggerated".

Manchester United, the Ginger McCain of the FA Cup.