ME and my MONEY

JOCKEY Bob Champion says the best gamble he ever took was telling his mother to put a few grand on Aldaniti at 66 to one, six weeks before he rode the horse to victory in the 1981 Grand National.

Champion earned the equivalent of £20,000 in prize money in nine and a half minutes when he won that race. But it was the generosity of punters who sent him their winnings as a result of his diagnosis for testicular cancer two years before that took his breath away.

He decided to use the money to set up a charity, the Bob Champion Cancer Trust, to fund further research into a cure for the deadly disease.

He never expected in his wildest dreams that the charity would raise more than £14 million for male cancer research and help increase the survival rate from 30 to 95 per cent in some cases of testicular cancer.

Now 70, Champion lives with his partner Jeanette in Newmarket and still places a £20 bet once a week.

His new autobiography I’m Champion, Call Me Bob looks at the whirlwind adventure his life has been since that glorious spring day at Aintree. It is available now in hardback for £19.99.