Shane his four-year-old son pops in and out and Dawn comes in with coffee and biscuits

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Shane, his four-year-old son, pops in and out and Dawn comes in with coffee and biscuits.Murphy talks racing but it is not a typical racing environment The lounge is no great temple to self-aggrandisement. There are no trophies crowded on the surfaces, no photographs to mark times past. It is as if Timmy Murphy is trying to block out what has gone before, the days when there was little focus, of any description."I've never been as level as this," he says. "Before I'd be either very down or way too high and partying.

Now it's one level of being content, rather than being either ecstatic or depressed. And there's me who lost his licence twice, trying to tell them what to do You haven't met someone like me before, I said. They had."Part of being a jockey, and especially a National Hunt rider, is a trench mentality, the thought that any day could be your last. It is a work-hard, play-hard philosophy which traditionally involves plenty of drinking.

There is no shortage of raddled figures in the celestial weighing-room. The young Murphy saw nothing outrageous in using his nights as a vehicle for inebriation. It was, however, a habit that was to grow into a horrible beast."When I was younger, working on the Curragh, it was the done thing. You went to work during the week and got pissed at the weekend That was life No one I knew was any different," he said "If you had a winner you went out and celebrated If you had a fall you went out and got pissed. Fell over."It was a destructive tendency which continued when Murphy came over to ride in Britain, first for Kim Bailey and then Paul Nicholls.