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The word was out last summer but there were many who had their doubts. Terry Ramsden, the whisperers said. He's back. Yeah, right, we said. We'll believe it when we see it. Then we did see it, and still we didn't quite believe. There he was in the winners' enclosure at Lingfield in December. Cock-sparrer Terry, Thatcherism's poster boy, the loudest and brashest Flash Harry of them all.
"My name's Terry," he once said. "I'm a stockbroker from Enfield. I've got long hair and I like a bet." Didn't he just. At one point in the mid-1980s Ramsden was said to be worth £150m, he had 100 horses in training and regularly bet in sums that would pay off the average mortgage. But then he crashed and burned along with the markets, and lost the lot. The last time anyone heard, he was bankrupt, in jail, and out of the racing game for good.
But it certainly sounds like Ramsden on the phone. An interview? No problem. You can tell everyone how I'm going to give £350,000 to the kids of Liverpool if Royal Atalza wins the National. Great, Terry, thanks. So where are you based these days?
"Based? I'm not really based anywhere right now. I've bought a house in Northamptonshire next door to David Beckham's, but I haven't moved in yet. I've got a place on the waterfront in Chelsea but it's still not decorated. So I'm just having to live at the Conrad Hotel."
It's him all right. He's back. Believe it.
The next morning, we are sitting in the breakfast room at the (five-star, suite-only) Conrad. There are three of us at the table: me, Terry, and Terry's self-belief. It is a tangible presence which cannot be ignored. He has been through so much, but in this, at least, he hasn't changed a bit.
He always was cocksure, and even the six months he spent in a hell-hole of a prison in Los Angeles in 1991, awaiting extradition to Britain to face fraud charges, did not knock it out of him. Gang warfare was raging all around, and he fully expected to come home in a body bag.
"Yeah, that was rough, and it was hard to stay alive," he says, and for a moment his fizz goes flat at the memory. Not for long, though. "But what I always say is that I was blessed. Not with the face, it's a shame about that, but I was blessed with a fantastic brain and a strong heart, and I think I've always opened my heart to things that need to be done. Some people have pretty faces, and some people have pretty arses. I have assets, and I've used them."
He returned to Britain in February 1992, was declared bankrupt shortly afterwards, and received a two-year suspended sentence in 1993 after pleading guilty to recklessly inducing fresh investment in his company, Glen International.
He could not escape jail five years later, though, when he was sentenced to 21 months for failing to disclose £300,000 worth of assets, a breach of the Insolvency Act. He said that he was using the money to buy a house for his wife and child, in an attempt to save his collapsing marriage. He emerged in 1999, broke and alone.
"I went all the way down," he says. "I had no friends, nowhere to live, I was bankrupt and I'd just been in prison, and that's probably as far down as you can go. The easiest thing to do would have been to boo-hoo and give up, to end up in the gutter drinking wine and feeling sorry for myself, but you'll never hear me boo-hoo. I'm not in the giving-up business. If I was I wouldn't be here, would I? I always thought I'd get my second chance, and now I have, and I've earned it."
Ramsden's second chance is founded on a revolutionary trading system for securities and currencies, which works a little like a betting exchange for the stock market.
"In terms of matched order, it would not be dissimilar to Betfair," he says. "In terms of speed and capacity, it would far outweigh anything that anybody has seen before. How much money is that worth? I don't know, but it will be a very, very large amount of money. I mean, a large amount."
But Ramsden has other priorities these days. "Other than revolutionising trading, the other thing I really want to do is build a major children's hospital. I've got a new partner and we're planning to start a family.
"And, in June, my court case [against the Inland Revenue, which forced him into bankruptcy] comes up. I can't say too much about it, but I'm 100% sure that I will be totally exonerated, and the reality of what happened to Terry Ramsden will become clear for the world to see.
"They might think they'll get some nice, quiet deal, but guys, you waited too long, and I'm way, way too strong for you now. They've wriggled and jiggled and now, end of June, they pay the bill. No way out, as they say in WWF."
You can only believe him, and he also retains the cheerful, devil-may-care outlook that made him so popular with the punters. It is 19 years now since one of his most spectacular bets, on Mr Snugfit in the National. "The truth of that is that I had half a million quid each way, quote, unquote. Anything else you hear is bullshit." As for Royal Atalza, an outsider for today's race, "on jumping ability and his rating he should go a long way. He's got a great young jockey [Paul Moloney] and if he's still there with three to go it will take a good one to beat him. But really I just hope the kid rides safe and he comes back in one piece."
Optimism, always optimism, even when his horse is a 66-1 chance. It has carried him back from the edge of the gutter, and the ride has surely not finished yet.
"I always said I wanted to be the first self-made British billionaire, which I wasn't," Ramsden says. "Wouldn't it be funny if that's how I ended up? That would be such a crack.
"I think what's different about my life at the moment is that there's a momentum behind me now, and it will be very hard to stop me. I can't be sure I'll win every race but I will always travel strongly and I'm not easily beaten. When you're hot, you're hot, and right now, this time, this place, I'm there. I don't know how long it will last but, right now, I've really got it going on."
A chequered career
1984 Buys the filly Katies for £500,000, which goes on to win the Irish 1,000 Guineas
1986 Lands a £500,000 each-way gamble when Mr Snugfit finishes fourth in the National
1987 Ramsden's company Glen International collapses
1988 Is "warned off" racing by the Jockey Club after failing to keep up repayments to Ladbrokes
1991 Arrested in America at the request of the Serious Fraud Office, which is trying to extradite him back to Britain. Spends six months in jail in Los Angeles
1992 Ramsden agrees to return to Britain where he is declared bankrupt with debts of £100m
1998 Sentenced to 21 months in prison for concealing assets from bankruptcy officials. He serves 10 months
1999 After release begins building another fortune in the private treaty market. Creates a revolutionary trading system which speeds up the transaction of equities. His new company has a market capitalisation of £250m
2003 The Jockey Club clears Ramsden to go racing again and to own horses. Returns to the track in October at Newmarket. His two-year-old Jake The Snake, named after his teenage son, wins the Bet Direct No Q Maiden Stakes at Lingfield in December, his first victory since his return
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