Sean Boyce is again our chairman for the night having done such a superb job previous years. He's been a presenter for At The Races since the start and he'll definitely be giving us some nuggets of information as well as making sure we don't fight too much. In his college days Sean was encouraged to have ante post bets for the Gold Cup on Garrison Savannah whilst he was out injured. The impeccable source of this info was the stage manager for a theatre production he was in. He couldn't watch the race as their was a matinee performance that afternoon. He says he can still remember his stable mole sticking his head through the lighting box window in the middle of an emotional scene on stage grinning from ear to ear and giving him the thumbs up. "Garry had won and the audience was wondering why I was grinning inanely during one of the tensest moments of the play".

Neil Channing attended his first Cheltenham Festival in the early 80s. The 1st Cheltenham races he watched were in the Sea Pigeon/Monksfield/Night Nurse era but the really early memories were the days of Desert Orchid when, as the college bookie, he cheered home Norton's Coin and moaned as Yahoo was collared close home.

An early bookmaking hero bet £10,000 in cash on Beech Road while Neil was standing and chatting to him in the Cheltenham ring. Although that was the year Kribensis won, the memory of the relaxed way the transaction occurred so impressed him that he just knew this was the game for him. The next eight years were spent as a Silver Ring bookmaker and his final five years on the course were as a front row Tattersalls bookie with too many wild swings to recall.

These days he never even thinks of going to the course, choosing instead to wake up at 4am and to sit on the internet reading everything possible rather than wasting time travelling.

Lydia Hislop

Lydia Hislop has worked as a journalist and broadcaster in horseracing since 1996. She joined Racing UK (now Racing TV) at its outset, alongside stints at Channel 4 and the BBC, and is now one of its leading presenters. She writes the popular weekly Road To Cheltenham column for racingtv.com and co-presents its popular spin-off TV show - now in its fourth year - with Ruby Walsh. She also currently works as a contributing editor for Tortoise Media and as a columnist for sportinglife.com. She previously wrote for the Times, Guardian and Racing Post, and spent six years as racing correspondent for London’s Evening Standard. For the past decade, she has also media-trained young jockeys to prepare them for the rigour of her future questioning!

Richard Hoiles

Richard Hoiles is the best-known racing commentator in Britain, having called the races since ITV took over terrestrial coverage of the sport in 2017. We are delighted to have Richard joining our panel for dinner this year as he brings a wealth of horse racing and punting knowledge and can provide a different viewpoint for us.