Derby dream may become reality for 91-year-old environmental

The fourth favourite for the Classic is owned by Bill Gredley, a self-made property millionaire from an East End family

In 1933, when Bill Gredley was born into a working-class family in the East End of London, it was a time when much of the local population would decamp to Epsom on the first Wednesday in June for an afternoon out at the Derby. And it is probably fair to say that the chance that Poplar’s newest resident would make the same trip 91 years later as the owner of one of the big-race favourites were slim to nil.

But Gredley has always been something of a one-off, in racing as in life. The self-made property millionaire once turned up at Royal Ascot sporting a morning suit, a top hat – and a ponytail, which caused a conniption among the ultra-conservatives in the Ascot fashion police. “They had a conference with the Queen and everybody, should they let me in?”, Gredley said this week. “I was talking to the Queen many years later and she was giggling about it. She said they made such a fuss.”