For so many years, while he beat me to be champion jump jockey, my great rival AP McCoy’s intake seemed to consist entirely of fast food, cola and Kit-Kats, then nothing for three days.

I grew up on the family farm. As a child, before Sunday lunch, I remember going to the field with a little bucket and my dad digging the first baby potatoes from the bottom of a root. Then, come harvest, seeing 20 tons being carried off on a lorry.

Most jockeys – and I include myself - still don’t eat healthily. I’m typically 10st 2 lb to 10st 4lb, stripped. So when I discover I’ll be riding a handicap of 10st 6lb, I’ll phone my wife on the way home in the evening and say, “I’ve got [to be] light tomorrow.” It would be a real temptation if the remains of someone’s chops or sausage and beans were left out in the kitchen. All I’ll want to do is get in the hot tub and eat peas. Or I may grate a little cheese on. Then in the morning I’ll need the sauna at the course. I’ll struggle to lose two pounds in two hours in there. I really wouldn’t advise it to non-jockeys – all you’re doing is losing water and not feeling great.

You probably have to be more stupid to be a jockey than a farmer. Jockeys get followed around every day by an ambulance. My father and brother have the pleasure and pride of farming top produce. Seriously, I hope people realise that UK produce is farmed to the highest standard of any in the world. By comparison my job feels nebulous.

My children’s favourite thing is for me to take them, on their ponies, up to the village shop, where I hold the reins outside while they go in for their chocolates or ice-creams. My daughter Willow’s little pony is called Fudge. My own first pony, Tasty, was more like a racehorse than a pony and I definitely got the bug through Tasty. But I notice more alcoholic names than food ones when it comes to horses – Vodka All The Way, Gin and Tonic, Absinthe Minded and Vodka Blur.

I’m travelling 80,000 miles a year, with a chauffeur now, and there’s not many journeys when we don’t stop for a coffee, or petrol, and it’s very hard not to be tempted by all the chocolate on display. I try to tell myself I’m being good if I buy giant Chocolate Buttons, because there’s less of them.

Today I rode in four races and after weighing-out I had a cup of tea, a biscuit and nibbled a couple of cocktail sausages in the jockeys’ dressing room. I could have sweated off two or three pounds on the track, if this had been a summer’s day.

I know boys are biased but my mum makes Sunday roasts better than anyone I know, always with the knack of looking like she’s doing nothing before it suddenly appears. No disrespect to my wife Fiona, because Sundays are racing days nowadays, all year round. I’m up at 4.30am, tiptoeing downstairs. Now I’ve got a family of my own I think, “Christ, it’s a shame that tradition has gone.” Fifteen years ago, when Sundays were still jealously guarded treats I could even go out on Saturdays evenings.

My kids joke that I’d be fat if I wasn’t a jockey. But I’d like to think I wouldn’t be a completely different shape.

For the Stobart Jump Jockey Championship standings, go to greatbritishracing.com