'I may be a fat, sexist lech, but it was being old that got me fired': Racing pundit John McCririck on why Channel 4 consigned him to the knackers' yard

Has John McCririck been put out to pasture in a humane manner? First impressions would suggest so. The 73-year-old, recently ‘retired’ from the racing world — or was sent to the knackers’ yard, as he’d call it — is reclining under a lilac tree in his garden, a bottle of Moet & Chandon at his fingertips, his features blurred behind a fug of cigar smoke.

He’s clad in clothes that only someone with nowhere to go would wear: his famous ‘work uniform’ tweeds replaced with a Hawaiian shirt and a pair of floral palazzo pants that have ridden up to reveal acres of curiously hairless legs. On his feet are peculiar little plimsolls worn over pink socks. The effect is part old man, part overgrown baby.

He offers me a glass of champagne, but makes no move to pour the Moet himself. Instead he bellows ‘Booby!’, and his long-suffering wife, Jenny — as elegant as he is dishevelled — comes running to fill our glasses.

So are we celebrating? Sadly not. He hasn’t taken being ‘let go’ by Channel 4, which he was at the end of last year, at all well. Last week, he ended up pleading age discrimination at an employment tribunal.

Of course, he doesn’t use the term ‘let go’. He says he was fired, and describes an altogether more brutal process than a gentle ushering to quiet meadows. In his version, it was the equivalent of a bullet to the head.

‘I was part of an ageist cull, simple as that. What we are talking about is the same thing that happened to people like Arlene Phillips and Moira Stuart at the BBC. The suits and skirts at Channel 4, who are youth-obsessed, took a look around and, with no accountability, said: “You are out.”

Fired: John McCiririck claims the decision by Channel 4 to let him go was part of an 'ageist cull'

'The only reason was my age. It was nothing to do with how I was doing my job — and as such, I am convinced they were breaking the law in firing me. So I’m not going to go quietly. I am fighting this.'

Channel 4 and IMG, which took over production of the broadcaster’s racing coverage from the start of this year, robustly reject allegations of ageism and say they will ‘vigorously’ refute the claim.

It’s by no means certain that Justice Anthony Snelson, who’s overseeing the case, will allow McCririck’s case to come to full tribunal. He heard opening arguments last week and has retired to consider whether Channel 4 has a case to answer.

The outcome will hinge on technicalities. Was McCririck actually employed by Channel 4 or, as they argue, merely a freelance on a rolling contract?

'Obviously, that’s ridiculous. I was the face of Channel 4 Racing and was there for 29 years. They phoned me up to fire me, and you can’t fire someone who wasn’t employed.'

Court battle: Racing pundit John McCririck claims that Channel 4's decision to 'let him go' was discrimination - an allegation the broadcaster strongly refutes

Those who hate John McCririck and everything he stands for (get in line, ladies) aren’t so much shocked at his disappearance from our TV screens, but appalled that it took so long. Let’s not forget this is the man who named his wife The Booby, now safely back in the kitchen, after a bird that was 'not very bright, squawks a lot and was easy to catch'.

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Isn’t it the case, I say, that he was fired because he was obnoxious, sexist and frankly an embarrassment? He may have been a racing expert par excellence (and no one has ever questioned his sporting knowledge), but hadn’t he simply become a parody of himself?

‘People can say: “Oh, they got rid because he is a big, fat, sexist lech,” and they are entitled to their opinions, but it never bothered my bosses. They knew what I was. My banter was part of the programme, always had been. Not once in 29 years did anyone ask me to tone it down.

‘They obviously liked what I was doing.

‘All the programmes that got me talked about, Big Brother, Wife Swap, those were Channel 4 productions, and they were happy for me to do them. It was a feather in the channel’s cap when I popped up in places that weren’t to do with racing. I was part of their brand.’

As his media career developed, so did John McCririck’s notoriety. He has made it his business to be as odious as possible. He lists the women who hate him. It takes a while. Sharon Osborne once threw him off her chat show, as did the Loose Women crew (‘who want my guts for garters,’ he chuckles).

Janet Street-Porter (‘or Street-Walker as I call her’) is an old adversary. And good grief, don’t get him started on Edwina Currie, who was his TV ‘wife’ for a week in 2006 on Wife Swap, and lived to tell the horrible tale. ‘When we did Wife Swap, I thought I’d be getting someone from Girls Aloud. Then she walked in,’ he says.

He tells this all with glee, not seeming to mind when a fleck of spittle flies from his mouth.

Oddly, he seems quite fond of Germaine Greer (‘such a clever woman; so much cleverer than me’), whom he met in the Big Brother house, although he can’t say much for her work.

Her pioneering feminist book, The Female Eunuch? ‘It ruined women’s lives,’ he says. ‘It gave them unrealistic expectations. They thought they could be better than men.’

Has John actually read the Female Eunuch, I ask. ‘No, I only have three O-Levels, but plenty of women did and it did them no good at all.’

After a few hours in his company, you do wonder how John McCririck hasn’t ended up in an employment tribunal before this — and in the dock himself, accused of some manner of sexual harassment.

To this day, he refers to his Channel 4 colleague Tanya Stevenson simply as ‘Female’. Once, on air, he famously sipped from a mug emblazoned with the words Lay of the Day and asked: ‘Does this refer to you, Female?’ The miracle is how he got away with it.

‘She never minded. It’s like calling Ian Botham, Beefy. They are just nicknames.’

What does he call other female colleagues then? Everything but their actual names, it seems.

Clare Balding, he says, is not ‘Clare’ in his head; she is ‘Ravishing’. ‘Oh yes, I used to call her Ravishing, as in: “I’d like to give her a ravishing,” ’ he hoots.

She must have been thrilled, I say. 

Notorious: The commentator made a habit of referring to his colleague Tanya Stevenson as 'Female'

‘I don’t think she was too happy about that. Not that she complained, but you could see it in her eyes. They’d go: “Oh God, here we go…” ’

Actually, John thinks Clare is a top-notch broadcaster and well deserving of every accolade going, but somehow that gets a bit lost in all the jesting.

He remembers only one incident of a woman at work saying overtly that she didn’t like the name he had chosen for her.

‘There was one female I thought was a nice piece of crackling, and I said: “Do you mind if I call you Crackling?” and she said: “Actually I do, would you mind not doing it?”, so I didn’t. More Champagne?’

In his head, of course, he is as smooth as his skin, and woman love him for it. ‘Women find me very attractive, and always have done,’ he says, as I struggle not to choke on my Moet.

Clearly, he thinks he’s quite the charmer who’s working his particular brand of magic on me. He congratulates me on the fact that I am not wearing high heels today, because he hates them.

‘Awful things. You see women teetering about in them at race courses and sinking into the sand — and what is the point? No man cares what a woman has on her feet — unless they are into foot fetishes, which I’m not.’

Charmer: John McCiririck claims the racing profession is a hotbed of passion

Nor does he like his women to wear make-up. ‘Uugh,’ he says. ‘There is nothing worse than snogging someone with lipstick on.’

His wife reappears outside at this point to check he is behaving himself. So Mrs McCririck — I cannot bring myself to address her as Booby — how is it having your husband at home full-time? She looks as though she might weep. ‘It’s awful — he needs something to do,’ she says.

But it’s not his fault he has this appalling attitude to women, insists John. It’s society’s fault. It’s Harrow’s fault. It might be his mother’s fault for sending him there aged six.

‘Boarding school was the making of me. I highly recommend it, but I do not agree with single-sex schools,’ he says. ‘What happens is one of two things. Boys emerge from them and don’t know how to deal with women. They belittle them and demean them. Or they go the other way, and they worship them, like goddesses.’

For someone who talks a lot about how women love him, he’s rather reluctant to share any details.

Has he ever been tempted by any of the women he says chase him? ‘No comment!’ he blusters, but he does go on to explain why the racing world is a hotbed of passion. And no, it’s not just because he is in it.

‘I put it down to the fact that the riders have this throbbing machine between their legs — the horse,’ he says with his usual charm.

He and Booby have been married for 42 years. They never had children, because ‘it never happened’ and because John hates them. ‘I do,’ he says, unashamedly. ‘Babies are all gooey, and then when they are teenagers they are either on drugs or having sex with the wrong people.’

I have to ask whether Booby minded not having children because, seeing her fussing around her dogs (there are three, none nearly as slobbering as their master), she seems quite a maternal type. ‘Oh no, I told her early on that one baby to look after — me — was quite enough’.

Press him on his relationship with his mother, though, and maybe you start to get some answers. He adored her. His father, Jim, was a merchant seaman and his hero, but his mother, Pauline, was the one who ruled the family home.

‘She was so stylish and so clever. She was the brains, definitely.

‘My life was all mapped out. She wanted prep school, Harrow, Oxford, The Guards, then the diplomatic service.’ He fell far short.

‘I managed prep school and Harrow, then it all fell apart. I was never that person. Can you imagine me in a bearskin outside Buckingham Palace? Leading my men in battle? I was a disappointment to my mother. I was lazy.’

John fell into the betting business before moving into journalism, as a sub-editor on Grandstand, and then onto TV. So was his mother ever proud of him?

‘No. She was appalled. I was always a failure,’ he says.

The astonishing thing about my encounter with McCririck is that I don’t bolt from the house feeling sullied at the end of it. I end up feeling quite sorry for him, as well as for poor put-upon Booby.

They both talk, with anguish, about how he can’t even return to his beloved races, as an ordinary punter.

‘I have tried, but then you get all the eyes looking at you, and the pity.’

He can’t stand pity. Hate, he can handle, not pity.

‘It has been my whole life,’ he says. ‘You have to have purpose to your life, and mine was always racing.’

He is suing for loss of earnings of £500,000 and damages of a whopping £2.3 million. It isn’t about the money, he says, but the principle. ‘When Miriam O’Reilly won her case against the BBC they had to pay damages — but not enough to make sure this never happens again.’

Oddly enough, his legal team is headed by a woman. Oh Lordy. What on earth does he call her? ‘I call her the Best in the Business,’ he says, suggesting there is sense in the old dog yet.