Having settled down at the end of each day to enjoy ITV’s coverage of the Cheltenham Festival, I have a burning question which has nothing to do with the racing: Why is it, when streaming on ITV-X, that I keep being shown an advertisement for careers in His Majesty’s Prison Service?

Does everyone see the same advert – on the basis that the algorithm suggests anyone who watches horseracing knows a few crooks – or is it bespoke, just for me, curated as a result of unguarded comments uttered in the presence of my i-phone or intelligent Chinese fridge. Things like: “That Trump fella… he want’s banging up”.

Purporting to relate the experience of a serving prison officer, the advertisement starts with the line “The first time I walked the wing I was terrified.” At which point, somewhere in my sub-conscious, I presumed the subject was wing-walking on aeroplanes – and I became mildly interested…

The narration continues… “We’re like teachers, counsellors, peace-keepers, all rolled into one.” Which is a bit like being a Clerk of the Course, except you could add the roles: ambassador, soothsayer and scapegoat too – because the ring-master of each raceday is generally ignored when everything goes okay, and is roundly blamed for anything that does not.

Take, for example, Jon Pullin who has already overseen a total of 345 runners during the staging of the first three days of the Cheltenham Festival this year, with another 133 declared to run on Gold Cup Day (during which we shall be rooting for Adam Nichol’s Minella Study in the Triumph Hurdle).

That’s a lot of owners, trainers, jockeys and stable staff to keep happy. And given the impossibility of pleasing everyone, all of the time, it was inevitable that the Clerk would take a battering from someone at some point. Yesterday it turned out to be top trainer Willie Mullins who, having withdrawn feature-race favourite Fact To File, said “It’s jump racing. We find we would like to have soft in the description of the ground. Good ground we think is not good enough for the type of individual we’re buying and trying to race. If the ground is going to be like this, we’re not going to bring them. We were promised watering, and I’m not sure the watering we were promised has been done. I’m a little bit annoyed about that.”

With four days of racing to manage, and an uncertain forecast that yielded 12mm of rain overnight into the final day at Cheltenham (and turned the ground Soft at Uttoxeter where Saturday’s selection is De Legislator), I believe it’s harsh to pillory Pullin for applying only 4mm or irrigation on Wednesday evening.

Being a Clerk of the Course is a difficult job, but if Jon Pullin doesn’t like it, there’s always an opportunity to join the prison service…