We all make mistakes. The response to last week’s error in the blog reminded me of the days when I occasionally recorded messages for a premium rate tipping line in the mid-1990s.

“Dear Tipster,” the more courteous letters would start, “You couldn’t tip tea from a teapot / water out of a bucket / shit from a shovel.”

That was simply the result of making a losing selection. Prior to last week I’d never actually tipped a horse for a race which had already been run – the Sovereign Handicap Hurdle being staged at Windsor on Friday, not Saturday as stated.

You’d think tipping a horse after the race had been staged would be quite easy. Several of the more observant readers of the blog certainly thought so – although, in a pleasant divergence from the normal outcome of the weekly blog-selection, at least none of them actually lost money when Spectacularsunrise finished sixth. In that respect, they were better off than Dorothy Paget whose nocturnal habits reputedly led bookmakers to regularly accept bets worth tens of thousands on horses that she owned several hours after they had run.

At least my selection wasn’t a deliberate error, like in The Sting, the film where Robert Redford and Paul Newman conspire to swindle a gangster out of his money by allowing him to place bets on races that have already finished.

Nor has the author of the blog been profiting from his losing selections – like the counterfeit tipsters who used to advertise “Get your first tip for free!” before sending all the responding punters a different selection in the same race. Believing that they’d hit upon a genuine source of inside information, the few lucky recipients of the winning selection would part with hard-earned cash for the next tranche of selections, while those that received the names of the also-rans didn’t matter.

In my defence, I’m going to say that Spectacularsunrise is worth keeping on your shortlist for the future. Despite winning a race which was televised by ITV Racing from Kelso in December, few people will have seen just how commanding the Twiston-Davies trained gelding was that day. Driving rain obscured the camera view in the dimly-lit final stages of the race, the only visible clue to his performance being the pink smudge of his owner’s silks as he crossed the line. Perhaps last week’s selection wasn’t only made too late, maybe it was also too early – look out for him next time.

This week’s selection is another recent graduate of a Kelso novice hurdle, Country Code having scored in much clearer conditions at the Festive Fling meeting. Trained by Ruth Jefferson, Country Code looks capable of making the step up in grade for Doncaster’s Grade 2 River Don Novices Hurdle on Saturday – and I hope that he might prove one for the future too, if he returns to Kelso for the Paris Pike Novices Chase next season.