From Lawyer to Horse Racing Presenter

Having a bad day at work? Ever feel like resigning on the spot, throwing the mobile in the nearest river and flying off to drink strangely-named cocktails on an exotic beach somewhere? On occasions we have all become disillusioned with our job, but few actually have the courage to forsake everything for the sport they love.

Channel Four racing presenter, Lesley Graham, is such a person. Now an integral part of terrestrial television’s coverage of the Turf, her career actually began on a completely different path as she explains.

“I actually trained to be a lawyer at Clifford-Turner, which is now Clifford Chance,” she reveals. “I was based in London when I got engaged to my husband, Neil, who was a racehorse trainer in Newmarket at the time. I knew that unless I moved we would never see each other, so I joined a firm of provincial solicitors not far from his yard.”

However, strange as it may seem, Graham missed the lengthy hours that legal life in the Capital entailed and was soon looking for an exciting change.

“I got bored,” she admits. “Originally you think its great going home at 5.30 every evening, but as there wasn’t much to do the day seemed longer. I was desperately looking for something to do when a friend mentioned Channel Four were looking for a lady presenter.

“So I wrote off cold, and got a letter back saying the next time they were in Newmarket I would have a screen test. I had done a fair amount of lecturing as a solicitor, and remember thinking it can’t be too hard standing on your feet and spouting.”

The big day soon came and Graham quickly realised the demands her future career would hold. Having been forced to review the afternoon’s racing without her notes, which had gone astray when celebrating her husband’s earlier winner, she received the distressing news she was to interview the racing pundit, John McCririck. A notoriously difficult figure, who has since become a household name through his appearances in Celebrity Big Brother and Wife Swap.

“No one had mentioned the interview,” she recalls. “I remember thinking ‘lets get this done as quickly as possible’ as I presumed my chance had gone. As a result I relaxed, and when Mac started having a go, a bit of the solicitor in me surfaced, and I batted it straight back. I assume my reaction caught their eye and I have been batting things back at Mac ever since.”

February 1993 saw her first appearance on Channel Four’s Saturday racing programme, The Morning Line, broadcast from the seafood bar at Uttoxeter racecourse (“television is so glamorous!”), and soon the realisation came that the day job would have to go. An apparently “easy” decision, although “a little panicky when you realise the pension, private healthcare and guaranteed money have all gone.”

Now with over 15 years experience in front of the camera, Graham is largely credited for paving the way for female presenters within racing, and was part of the Epsom Derby team who won a Bafta in 1999. But despite the accolades the occasional blunder can still slip through the net, as she recalls:
“I interviewed a Ghurka at Newmarket once, who are famed for the large knives they carry, called khukris. I ended up on air asking this guy whether he could show me the size of his weapon. Apparently, the people in the production studio were laughing so hard they had to be picked off the floor!”

Words: Mark Stewart