It was Benjamin Disraeli who first coined the phrase about “lies, damned lies, and statistics,” and when Timmy Murphy passed the post first on Wizard Of Edge at Taunton yesterday the statisticians will have made a note.

It would be to the effect that it was Murphy’s 1,000th jumps winner in Britain, which leaves him only halfway to the milestone that Richard Johnson reached last month and barely in the same parish as the indefatigable Tony McCoy who broke the 3,000-winner barrier last February. 

But that would be damning Murphy by mere figures alone and give a lie to the resilience of a man who has stood on the brink of oblivion, looked over the edge and then come back to some of his greatest moments.  Most of us will admit to times when alcohol has been a welcome acquaintance. It listens to our troubles and washes away the problems of the day in a gentle haze.

However, when the one-night stand gives way to a long-term relationship the divorce, either from the drink or normal life, can only be painful. Murphy has seen the highs, the lows and the four walls of a prison cell that gave an added edge to his autobiography.

Riding The Storm may not have been the most original title for a book but it succinctly encapsulated the life and sometimes-grim times of Murphy.

If writing about his life was easy then living it at times was a polar opposite. The most compelling part of his story revolves around how a drinking binge drove him to commit an act of indecent assault on a flight from Tokyo to Heathrow in April 2002 and how Murphy then found the drive to claim back his life, his self-worth and his career. This is worth repeating, not to rake over the past, but to remind us all just how rough a road that Murphy has travelled to reach this point.

In one passage he recounts his feelings as he stood in the dock of Isleworth Crown Court listening to the judge as he delivered the six-month sentence after Murphy had been convicted of being drunk on an aircraft and indecently assaulting a member of the cabin crew.

“Alcohol had certainly got me into some poor situations in the past, but this was different. This was a whole different league. I had never made national headlines before; I had never been ashamed enough to cut myself off from the rest of the world for days before; I had never sought counselling before; I had never been staring down both barrels of a prison sentence before.”

Murphy had already faced up to his first trial; it was taking a long look in the mirror and realising that he did not like what he saw and that it was not the real man. “He was hiding behind a glass of beer,” Murphy explained, “trying to be somebody else and not who he was.”

The book did not make an attempt to portray Murphy in a favourable light but one that shined on the whole story. “I didn’t want to hide behind anything,” he once said of the book. “It happened and it happened for a reason and I just wanted to explain how it happened and how something good came out of it. It’s about facing up to it and telling how, when you do face up to stuff, it’s easier in the long run.

“Like I said in the book I was the last person to realise that there was something wrong because I thought it was completely normal. What I’m trying to get across is that you can see people that are struggling but they can’t see it themselves. It can be someone’s wife, mother, father and they can tell you all day long but, until you face up to it yourself, you can’t begin to do anything about it.

“It was an accident waiting to happen. Someone’s drinking doesn’t settle down, it just gets worse. Who knows where I’d be today?”

The chances are care-of Skid Row, but, with the help and support of those who still believed in him, Murphy has dragged his life back on course and is now fulfilling a riding talent that makes him one of the best in the weighing room by believing in himself as much as others do. “I’ve become more confident in my own ability,” he said. “At the end of the day you can’t make horses go any faster and you need to be able to think clearly to judge each horse’s ability.”

Long before he came face-to-face with a High Court judge Murphy had been in the stewards’ room so many times he was almost being invited to the Christmas parties. In one season he accumulated almost as many days’ suspension for whip offences as he did winners. Perhaps he can be forgiven for smiling now that some grandstand jockeys think he spends too much time riding at the back of the field to make a quiet run through the field but there are regrets about some of what he did.

“At the time I didn’t have any but now, looking back, I think there was no need for it. I was just going on instinct and not thinking it through. Now it’s gone the other way some people say I’m not hard enough on them,” he said, adding ruefully “it’s a funny old game.”

The game is still a winning one for Murphy who, at 35, is still at the peak of his powers having conquered a mountain of problems that would have claimed lesser souls and brought one of its greatest career peaks when Comply Or Die won the Grand National in 2008. “I didn’t take the most straightforward route but I think I learned more coming the way I did,” Murphy once said. “I’m a firm believer in that things happen for a reason and I’ve got a very strong reminder of why I’m here now. I’ve lost too much as it was – I’m not losing any more.”

The road that stretches ahead can only be travelled one day at a time and he knows it. “You can’t say never to anything in life,” is Murphy’s creed, “but you can say never for today.”

And look forward to tomorrow.

Paul Wheeler