Royal greeting that tells Lester Piggott: You are forgiven

IT WAS redemption day at the Epsom Derby on Saturday — and not just for Padraig Beggy, the 31-year-old jockey who stormed to a thrilling victory on a 40-1 rank outsider two-and-a-half years after his 15-month drug ban in Australia.

For an older Derby legend, Lester Piggott, who was sentenced to three years’ imprisonment for tax fraud of more than £3 million in 1987 and subsequently stripped of his OBE, was warmly greeted by the Queen (above and inset).

The otherwise unremarkable greeting for nine-times Derby winner Piggott, now 81, is a sure sign that Her Majesty, who looked resplendent in a yellow coat and hat, has consigned his conviction — for which he did just a year’s porridge — to history.

Perhaps this could pave the way for the return of Piggott’s OBE? When the late, great racing commentator Peter O’Sullevan once asked the Queen if reinstatement of Piggott’s OBE was possible, he received a considered reply: ‘I Iike the way you put it, but he was rather naughty . . . not only rather naughty, but very stupid.’