In one quarter last year, the three lines and mobile telephone that are Roberts’s essential tools cost him pounds 2,000.. Jack Frost must have once had a really bad day’s punting at Cheltenham. The conspiracy of the elements against the Gloucestershire course continues with the loss of a third consecutive card this afternoon, writes Richard Edmondson

The last time Cheltenham raced was on 8 December. When two or more from the agent’s stable are at a race meeting where there is a spare ride, he insists that the trainer takes the pick.It is ironic following the last two years that Roberts is now destined to contribute to his first jockeys’ title with someone other than Maguire. He also represents Tony McCoy and David Bridgwater who, accidents apart, seem to have this campaign’s test between them.If either win the title Roberts, at 35, will reappraise his position as he will have achieved his ambition in what he considers “a young man’s game”. Adrian was riding as well as ever and we had all this ammo waiting, but then Desert Fighter ran through a wing at Hereford.”After a fall at Leicester on Tuesday, Maguire is again sicklisted with a knee injury. But as he was Roberts’s professional springboard, Maguire is probably his favourite, though he does not let that affect riding decisions.

“He [Adrian] has put so much in since coming over here and he’s grown so much both as a jockey and a person it’s a tragedy he hasn’t been champion jockey so far,” Roberts said.”To ride 194 winners, like he did in the first year we were close, and not be the champion is a scandal really. If someone was awake towards the end of that season I was on the phone to them and I watched every race. I was close to a nervous wreck so I hate to think of the demands it placed on Adrian and Richard [Dunwoody].”Last year I firmly believe we had the ammunition to win, but we had a freak accident. “Like anything else it has taken quite a long time to build up trust and respect,” he said.

“But I feel I get on with 99 per cent of trainers well now and some have become friends.”The accelerator was really depressed in the early 1990s when Roberts took over the affairs of a young Irishman who was seeking his fortune in Britain, a rider called Adrian Maguire. When the agent talks of Maguire he invariably uses the “we” in discussing his fortunes.The jockey’s narrow failure to win the championship in the last two seasons has obviously hurt both, but, like a father and son at sports day, it is difficult to tell if it was combatant or spectator who was most disappointed. Swift lived with Dean Gallagher, and Paul Harley moved in with him. Soon, Roberts was attracting aspiring young men like Fagin, and his attention concentrated on the winter game.Not many of Britain’s trainers greet newcomers to the sport with an invitation for tea, and Roberts was no exception. “I used to stand outside the track and wait for somebody to get me in.”Briefly the manager for an Indian owner who had horses with Geoff Lewis, Roberts first represented Jason Swift part-time. By the age of 12, a lot of the chalk he saw was not going on blackboards but rather against horses’ names. “I used to skive off school and go to Kempton and Sandown and get the bus to Ascot,” he said.

“In the bad weather trainers are ringing me up and jokingly asking if I’m taking it easy,” he said. “Relatively I am, but there are still entries coming out.”Dave Roberts, though, has not always been as committed as this to the problems set before him. The agent leaves when the broom comes out to sweep away the dead slips and spends the rest of the evening back on the blower.This, it has to be said, does not happen all the time. Every year, without fail, Roberts takes the family abroad for a fortnight for the first two weeks in July (and presumably asks them what they have been doing for the previous 12 months). For the rest of the year, seven days a week, he is the chap who appears to have been the victim of a prankster with superglue who has sabotaged the telephone earpiece.During the ice age that has swept in this weekend, Roberts is hardly resting by the log fire with a Scotch in his hand. “You get calls any time between those hours.”Phase one is trawling through the entries and form books, pinpointing the likely winners for his cavalrymen.