Sanderson is definitely a man of many parts
Thirsk clerk of course received glowing praise for his performances at the Edinburgh Fringe
Egypt; blue waters; red Sails; ice tinkles; Love triumphant; love betrayed; love the destroyer; Revenge, 1923 and Poirot’s moustache. Sound familiar? Quite a few people had good reason to celebrate at York although one jockey famously celebrated when he had no particular cause to do so, but not many had a better excuse than Thirsk clerk of the course James Sanderson. He was on a busman’s day out to the Knavesmire with the cheers still ringing in his ears and four-star reviews from the Edinburgh Fringe the week before.
Sanderson, 48, is one of racing’s regular luvvies and as an essential member of Yorkshire’s amateur troupe Livewire Productions – not quite professional but one up from am-dram, darling – is a veteran of four Edinburghs, while the company has performed at the past 18.
He has a large repertoire of characters in his back catalogue; on his first visit he was Sir Toby Belch, a part he was built for, in Twelfth Night. In The Romanovs, recounting the last days of the Russian royal family, he was Tsar Nicholas, and in Oliver Twist, set in 1940s Berlin, he was Wilhelm Sykes of the German army.
In this year’s production, Death on the Nile, which played to full houses (60 seats – which, I suppose, makes it more of a semi-detached) during its six-night run he was three men.
He was Colonel Race, who procures Hercule Poirot, Lord Carnarvon, a character introduced to the play having unleashed the curse of King Tutankhamun – as opposed to the Queen’s late racing manager – and Vincenzo Marietta, a boat operator who claims to be Italian but is actually an East End gun-runner, giving Sanderson plenty of scope with accents.
Like the Redgraves, Foxes and Postlethwaites, as befits all great acting dynasties, his son Hugh, 16, is following him into the business and played the part of Fergus Otterburn, a bored teenage passenger on the boat who helps Poirot solve the mystery, a part in which, according to his father, he played himself, only politer.
Earlier this year, at a production of Cold Comfort Farm, which took place at his racecourse, Sanderson played a Starkadder brother, while the BHA’S senior clerk of the scales, Charles Stebbing, improbably took the part of Earl Neck, an American film producer, and Mrs Stebbing played the front end of one of the Starkadder’s cows.
Of course it is impossible to do Edinburgh in August and not miss a Thirsk meeting, so Sanderson had to rope in the ever-reliable Fiona Needham for the fixture he missed. But whether it is treading in divots or treading the boards, Sanderson is a solid performer.
When asked how the arable farming had been going this summer, a member of the York Race Committee replied that, with rain on most days throughout July and August, it has been what is termed a “bachelor harvest” – that is to say “grab a bit when you can”.
This is a feather in point-topoint trainer Lizzie Harris’s cap. She has succeeded where Aidan O’brien, Jonjo O’neill and Sir Anthony Mccoy all failed with Wild West, a son of Galileo, by getting him to win – something, anything.
“Westy”, who remained a maiden after seven races under Rules, joined her out of training in 2013, and on Sunday night, ridden side-saddle by Harris, he was crowned the supreme champion at the Racehorse Owners Association and Goffs National Showing Championships for retrained racehorses at Aintree.
A good work horse but too clever by half on the racecourse, Wild West remains “a bit of a monkey”, but excels in the show ring because of his penchant for showing off.
It is not the first Jonjo O’neill outcast with which Harris has done well – another, Lough Inch, was the season’s champion point-topointer, winning eight races.