Peter Scudamore used to think the best way to deal with a tricky situation was to panic. Now, he prefers to handle difficulties with prayer and goes to Catholic church most Sundays. ‘I’m not as good a Christian as I should be,’ he says. ‘But everyone has to find a way of coming to terms with things. Racing is a dangerous sport and I face that through religion. I say a prayer.’

This week Scudamore will ride in the Cheltenham Festival and on Thursday he will sit astride Carvill’s Hill, the Arkle of the Nineties and the 5-4 favourite to win the Gold Cup. Probably the world’s best jockey, he recently rode his 1500th winner and has ridden a record-breaking 200 winners in one season. But this week is vital. For Scudamore has never won the Grand National or the Cheltenham Gold Cup. ‘You always think you are going to do better than you actually do.’

He has fallen thousands of times and even cracked his skull. His father, a top jockey, had his racing career cut short when he partially lost the sight of one eye. ‘It’s not something I like to think about. There are some bones I haven’t broken,’ Scudamore almost whispers. ‘Obviously, I’m frightened. I don’t want to hurt myself. The fear of death and permanent injury is always there. But I don’t go into races thinking, ‘I could die’.’ Just over a year ago, he broke his leg – again. Half his shin, he says, was dangling. ‘I lay there thinking, ‘Shit, I’m going to have to have it amputated’ . . . I’m very rude to ambulance men. It’s probably from my childhood, because my mother was so over-protective. She wouldn’t even let me bicycle down the road. If you fell over, she was always there and fussing – so I can’t stand ambulance men clucking over me.’

Scudamore has a starved look and a dry sense of humour. He isn’t weeny like flat race riders but is slight with brown eyes and what looks like a concave tummy. (He sometimes needs to weigh 10 stone, including a saddle.) He is also very softly spoken and often talks in parentheses and sentences that don’t finish.

He is racing’s Mr Nice Guy and considered a pillar of rectitude. He is delightful, sincere, quietly confident and unassuming. He also has a choirboy’s good looks and a famously good and stable marriage. So which deadly sin is he most attracted to? ‘Perhaps greed,’ he says. ‘No, lust.’ Which is surprising, considering his wholesome image.

He has been married to Marilyn for 12 years, since he was 21. He looks foxed when he tries to remember how old she is, eventually deciding she’s about five years older than he. Is he faithful? ‘Yes,’ he says, with a furrowed brow and a wringing of hands.

‘We don’t have the perfect marriage, though. It isn’t like one long honeymoon where I’m in a permanent state of love. Marriage is hard work. We scream at one another and sometimes don’t talk for a week. It’s hard for her with me always being the focus of attention, though it’s slightly easier now she runs her own company promoting jockeys. I’m very ambitious, so I must be very hard to be around. Take holidays, I can’t stand the idea of just lying on a beach. So she went to Barbados with some friend of hers. We try to live an open, mature life.

‘We work things out. If we don’t talk about things, then they brew up. She smokes and that upsets me and is the cause of arguments. We don’t always appreciate what we’ve got. The thing I want out of life is to educate my children. I have two lovely boys (aged nine and eight). It would be wrong of me to want more.’

His childhood has been described as idyllic. He was brought up on a small farm in Herefordshire and retains a slight West Country accent. ‘I was always very proud of my father, because he won the Grand National and the Gold Cup.’ Scudamore wrings his hands again, talking about the two wins that have so far eluded him. ‘He was a brave, honest and good jockey, so I looked up to him. I suppose that gave me my ambition. But I don’t feel I have to live up to him. There hasn’t been any pressure in that way.

‘My parents were so good, a wonderful couple who set the standards of right and wrong for me. I wasn’t spoilt. We didn’t live in luxury or have fast cars, but we had everything we wanted. Looking back, my childhood was very stable.’

Scudamore had an unremarkable academic career at Belmont Abbey, a minor (Catholic) public school. ‘A kindly and cheerful boy with a good sense of humour,’ his housemaster said in 1974 on a report that had a ‘very poor result’ in chemistry and a ‘weak performance’ in maths.

As a child, he used to pretend he was able do things before he had actually mastered them. ‘I always thought from the day that I first rode that I was the best jockey in the world.’ He was three years old. ‘I know it’s stupid, but I’ve always wanted to be the best. If someone criticises me, I find it hard to accept. You always believe you are the best.’ (His father is the only person from whom he accepts criticism and the two are still very close.) ‘I’m still a bad loser. Winning is a great high and losing is a real down. Racing gets me down. I know it shouldn’t. I’m not always happy. Sometimes I get really fed up.’

His mother, fearful lest he get hurt, never wanted him to go into racing. His first job was as an estate agent. But he had his first National Hunt win when he was just 20. ‘Whenever I go home, my mother still asks me when I’m going to get a proper job.’

He feels his upbringing was unfairly privileged. ‘It was very privileged and false. I’m not sure it’s right to be brought up in such a protected way,’ he says now. ‘Most people aren’t bought up like that nor do they go to all-boys schools.’

Because of his elitist background, when Scudamore left school he felt awkward with girls. ‘I left school at 17 without many female friends,’ he says. ‘I was always frightened of rejection.’

He does, however, enjoy meeting the Royals. The Princess Royal used to ride out from his yard. ‘Goodbye Ma’am,’ he said, as she left one day. Then his youngest son, Thomas, then only knee high to a jockey piped up: ‘Goodbye Mum.’ The Princess fixed him with an amused eye. ‘Thomas,’ she said, laughing, ‘I think you have ideas above your station.’

On another occasion, he sat next to the Queen Mother at a dinner of course upon course of a Roux brothers-prepared banquet. Typically, Scudamore was dieting, so he spent the evening picking at quails’ eggs. He doesn’t have a lavish lifestyle. He lives near Cheltenham in a house called Mucky Cottage, which is named after a horse. His trainer Martin Pipe (together they make the most successful team in racing) picks him up by helicopter in the summer. Otherwise he drives himself, around 50,000 miles a year in his Peugeot 605. He races six days a week, often leaving home at four in the morning.

He does a spot of gardening in his spare time. He thinks it would be naff for him to read Dick Francis. ‘I read him when I was a kid. Racing is nothing like Dick’s books.’ And he doesn’t think he looks like a Francis hero.

He admits to a turnover of £80,000. But later in the interview he says that was a ‘porky pie’. Because he doesn’t want a visit from the tax man? ‘Yes,’ he laughs. ‘And because I don’t think it’s good to boast about your earnings. I want to be a millionaire the same as the ordinary arse (his word for a non-rider), but it’s not a lifetime’s ambition.’

People go on about his retiring. He knows his racing years are limited and his nerve will not hold out forever. But he loves his way of life and its risk. ‘If you said to me a few years ago that I would ride 200 winners, I would have said, ‘I’ll then be the most famous jockey, my life will change. That will be it. The kids won’t cry and the missus won’t moan.’ But, in fact, it doesn’t change anything. I might win the Gold Cup on Thursday, but life won’t change. And I don’t want it to change.’