It frightens the women and children seeing a fat creature like me

'I don't have anything at all to do with virtual racing,' screams John McCririck, the veins in his neck bulging, his puffy, ring-laden index finger jabbing forward. 'Where did you get that from? You've done a shocking job researching this interview. What have I got to do with virtual racing? I've never promoted virtual racing. If punters want to do it it's up to them, but I'd never bet on it because the margins are so bad!'

Ten minutes into an interview in the press box at Brighton Races, and 'Big Mac' is in the sort of full, bullying flow that usually intimidates journalists who don't know their sports gambling. I've just asked him to reconcile his 'Come racing' mantra with helping Victor Chandler to promote virtual racing - a straightforward enough line of enquiry - but now the ex-hack and former bookie is turning scarlet. 'I fear for this article,' he rasps, looking like he's on the verge of an aneurism. 'You've got it wrong before you start! I don't know where you get your research from!'

Pants on fire

The answer is that Big Mac visited our offices last year to promote Chandler Park, which contains virtual football and racing, on Victor Chandler's websites. Seeing him luxuriating in a limo with two dolly birds, quaffing champagne, and waving his Lusitania cigars around wasn't something we were about to forget in a hurry, (nor, as we found out later, had VC), but for a man as sharp as McCririck the loss of memory is a surprise.

His earlier studied disinterest in IE's questions, his refusal to look up from pre-race scribblings, his oh-so-predictable hectoring, and even the fact he wouldn't shake hands when we met are all pretty much what his eccentric TV persona would lead you to expect from a face-to-face meeting. Maybe my refusal to pay his agent for the interview hadn't helped matters.

Things weren't always like this. Once, in a distant past before we became a nation obsessed with celebrity, people actually had to be good at their chosen field to get on in life. Mac was one of them. Forget his self-deprecating remarks about being a 'failed journalist, failed bookmaker and failure at everything' - his life was swiftly out of the gates. Benefiting from wealthy, Jersey-based parents and a Harrow education, to his credit, he followed a less obvious career path and took up with a one-armed illegal bookie called Wingy. Then came a spell at the Sporting Life which, I put to him, could hardly be described as 'failure' given that he won an award for the Scoop of the Year.

'No,' winces McCririck, with a studied look of pained exasperation and, perhaps, a touch of venom. 'I got Specialist Writer of the Year at the British Press Awards in 1978. And Campaigning Journalist of the Year in 1979 (when he went head-to-head with Woodrow Wyatt of the Tote). But they were very bad years - the crop was very bad and there was no one to pick from.'

Moving swiftly on...

Whether it's modesty, embarrassment or just that it all pre-dates his public profile, McCririck doesn't want to talk about the 'basic rubbish' of his early years. So we gloss quickly over the circumstances of his departure from the Sporting Life, his successful litigation over allegations in the Daily Star, and on to his stint at Grandstand, working behind David Coleman, Frank Bough and Des Lynam.

By 1984, when racing moved to Channel Four, he was thrown into the thick of the action and a media - and racing - star was born. While Barry Dennis eventually muscled in on Big Mac's Morning Line territory, regardless of just how successful McCririck was at picking winners, what's incontrovertible is how he helped promote racing. In an era of bland, cardboard cut-out telly presenters, his appearances in front of camera with deerstalker and dickie bow, perfecting manic waves for viewers, were often more memorable than the day's racing.

So would it be fair, I enquire, to consider him more a 'racecourse entertainer' in the historical trackside tipster mould than racing expert? More Gully-Gully (famous for his costumed showmanship) than John Francombe (the ex-multiple champion jockey turned broadcaster)? 'What?!' snorts McCririck, spittle flying across the press room. 'There's no historical context at all! I'm just a journalist, for God's sake! Journalists aren't historical figures - they're ghastly, awful people.'

That's entertainment?

And so on to the issue of professional responsibility. McCririck flatly denies he's the 'punter's friend' (something some punters following his tips over the years would, perhaps, agree with) and just, as he puts it, a 'pub bore with a microphone'. But what, we enquire, about his responsibility as a recognisable face of racing? As Peter Scudamore put it in his Inside Line column: '"Come racing" is McCririck's battle cry, but will anyone want to after viewing him (on Celebrity Big Brother)? Will a face that represents a lot that is alien to the vast majority of the population sell the sport or put people off? (His) performances have probably entertained, but the potential damage he has done is immeasurable.'

'He's probably right,' concedes McCririck. 'It frightens the women and children seeing a fat creature like me. But I don't have responsibility for racing. I have responsibility for going into people's houses as a journalist, and that's it. The jockeys, owners, breeders and trainers are racing. I contribute nothing.'

So would it be therefore true to say he has done damage to racing? 'Well, I wouldn't want to meet myself at the races, would I?' he blusters - whatever that means. 'It's not my responsibility to get people to like me.'

An uneasy, pregnant pause follows, and then on to the issue of Cheltenham this year. You may remember Channel Four's Morning Line coverage was, in the words of the Daily Telegraph, 'frazzled, patchy and, in places, wildly out of control.' In particular, there was a spectacular difference of opinion between John Francombe and Big Mac over the inability of jockey Paul Carberry to exploit a winning position on board Harchibald in the Champion Hurdle. McCririck claimed anyone criticising Carberry should wash their mouths out with soap because they 'didn't know about racing'. Butting in, Francombe had silenced Big Mac with the words that were probably on many viewers' lips: 'But it was his fault! In hindsight, he will wish he had ridden an entirely different race.'

'What do you mean?' blurts Big Mac aggressively at me, jabbing the bling finger again. 'Your view that the coverage was poor is an extraordinary point of view! Channel Four got a BAFTA in 1999 and the praise we got for Cheltenham is virtually unlimited. As for the incident with Francombe, people in other sports daren't criticise the participants. He has his view and I have mine. I'm just proud to be part of a small team that got so much praise.'

But resting on the laurels of an award six years ago is no good for Channel Four, a fact its TV executives know only too well. The truth is their racing coverage rarely rises above the 800,000 viewer mark and they stand to lose in the region of £8 million this year alone. Legal changes that allow bookmakers to advertise during racing should alleviate the problem, but there's a deeper-rooted issue that needs to be tackled: how to make racing appeal to a younger, wider audience in the era of the betting exchange and digital TV revolutions.

As one of the faces of racing for the past 23 years on Channel Four, McCririck must wonder whether he's part of the problem, not the solution. Which may in part explain his move towards fresh pastures, most memorably earlier this year on Celebrity Big Brother and now with poker - he's appearing regularly at many of the big UK tournaments, including the recent London Poker Open and VC Poker Cup.

Reality cheque

'I'm the only person to be honest about it,' says McCririck of his reality TV appearance. 'I needed the money. It was decent wedge - not enough - but you couldn't walk out or they wouldn't pay. I got the housemates to hate me and vote me out as fast as they could. The system worked well.'

Soon we end up back where we started, with McCririck refusing to answer questions, looking bored, shouting out his opinions and hectoring me. 'You've come all this way and you've wasted your time,' sneers McCririck. 'I thought you were going to ask me all about my poker sponsorship deal... That's the only reason I agreed to this interview!'

And so he wanders off for his photoshoot. Seeing a camera, the professional eccentric returns in spades and he's pulling fake-manic grins for our photographer while telling him how much he fancied getting hold of Page 3 model Jodie Marsh ('What tits! I wish girls had been like that when I was young.')

I'm reminded of how a racing industry contemporary, also at Harrow, once said McCririck 'has been playing a role all his life.' Big Mac doesn't seem quite sure who he wants to be today, and I'm damned if I can work him out either. If McCririck is no longer the acceptable face of betting on the horses, moving elsewhere into TV and poker seems like a smart move. Look at McDonalds - the Big Mac made that firm, but when eating trends changed, it evolved to survive. Mind, I can't see anyone swallowing a low-fat version of McCririck, least of all Big Mac himself.