A cunning plan to get from Brighton to Barbados.

Byline: Steve Dennis

RIGHT, that's it. It's time to get rich quick. A monthly pay packet is all very well, but it isn't keeping me in the style to which I'm sure I'd like to become accustomed. I think I'm going to land a coup.

Everyone likes to read stirring stories of how the bookmakers were fleeced, whether through skill and planning (see Barney Curley and Yellow Sam), judicious introductions of needlefuls of steroids (see Ken Payne) or sheer barefaced rulebreaking (see Flockton Grey).

The trouble with those tales is that you only find out about them after the race is won and the money's safe in carrier bags on the kitchen table, with grinning collaborators divvying up the loot.

This coup is going to be different, because I'll tell you how I'm going to do it. No-one from the BHA reads this column, so I reckon we're on to a winner.

First, I'll need a horse. This is the easy bit. Have you seen how many horses some of these trainers have got? They're not going to know if one goes missing, are they? All I have to do is pop round to Alan King's, say, or Paul Nicholls', or Aidan O'Brien's on the pretext of a quick interview and, when no-one's looking, walk off with a horse.

(Note to self: not Denman. This needs to be more subtle. Just an ordinary one, not too white, not too brown, not too orangey.) Once the animal's safe in my back garden, cropping the lawn and nosing through the compost bin, I can get on with the plan. Whatever the horse's previous capabilities, I need to run him down the field a few times to put people off the scent. I'll establish a campaign encompassing races from 5f to 3m6f, Flat and jumps, hard ground and mud. After a season or two of that he won't know whether he's coming and going - but neither will the bookies.

I'll also keep him on a strict diet - starvation rations - so he ends up looking like Kate Moss in a horse suit and puts off casual parade-ring observers. (Note to self: mmmm, Kate Moss in a horse suit.) Ideally, I'd want world-renowned xylophonists fighting each other to play La Cucaracha on his ribcage.

As far as a jockey goes, I'll need someone with the nerves of a bombdisposal expert and the ability to keep his mouth shut. Failing the latter, I'll wire his jaw and take away his mobile phone. Choosing a racecourse is easy; although it would have to be the last race of the day to give me more time to shovel the cash on. Brighton, say. On a bank holiday - as long as the razor gangs got their cut.

Now to the betting strategy. This is where the real beauty of the scheme comes in. In the old days, all you had to do was get a burly accomplice to monopolise the only telephone box for miles around, or indeed to cut the phone wires, to prevent anxious off-course bookies sending money to the track and crashing the price.

The internet has made burly accomplices relatively redundant in this regard, but I can turn this to my advantage. All I need to do is email exactly half the people on Betfair five minutes before the race, tell them the horse is a cert and put them on 20 per cent commission.

They'll back the horse with the other half at all odds from 999-1 down to 1.01 (or even less). They should be able to get millions on. FOR tradition's sake, I'll employ a band of carefully chosen hangers-on to don workmen's clothing (whatever that is) and tramp the streets of London and other large cities with the task of having a fiver here and a tenner there in every betting shop. Oncourse, I'll mob the Tote windows and snap up all the big early prices.

That just leaves the race itself.

Two weeks before the big day the horse's diet will be changed to consist solely of Red Bull and Mars bars, to pep him up, put a shine on his coat and a gleam in his eye.

Holes in his teeth, too. The 2lb overweight from the jock (jaw wire) shouldn't be a problem, and it's downhill all the way at Brighton, so even if he drops dead mid-race his momentum should carry him clear of the field.

What can go wrong? See you in Barbados.

FOLLOWING last week's column, the breeder and owner of Sabaki River, Kathy Stuart, contacted me about the old boy.

It was ultimately bad news - he died about three years ago - but it seemed like all good news before that, as on his retirement he went to live with Stuart and thence to a friend of hers, where he enjoyed an active time of it hacking around the countryside.

He may no longer be with us, but he leaves many happy memories with me (as well as the slightly shivery memory of that Newbury exit). When the Racing Post ran the series 100 Favourite Racehorses, I voted for him as my third choice; what's a final-flight fall between friends?

'Even if he drops dead mid-race his momentum should carry him clear'