IT was three flights down from gran mater’s town residence in Old Shettleston Road to the newsagents at the foot of the close. I took them at a gallop, whipped on by granny’s urgency and holding a piece of paper with bits of copper wrapped in it.

The contents of my grubby mitt simply consisted of granny’s line. The copper amounted to two shillings. This was the humble price of a three-cross. This will mean nothing to non-gamblers. It meant everything to Jessie. The line contained the names of three horses that she believed would win, supplying her with three doubles and treble, enough to fund a summer trip to the family dacha in Eddlewood.

There were three rituals to the granny three-cross. First, the races had to be on the telly. And, frankly, the racing was always on council telly in the 1960s. Second, the choices could only be made after an exhaustive perusal of the Daily Record and the first edition of the Evening Times. Third, all Lester Piggott’s mounts had to be assessed with a care that suggested grannie was juggling with gelignite. And she only handled gelignite when short of funds on fireworks’ night.

The line left at the newsagents was collected by a bookie’s runner. I never knew for certain if Jessie had any winners. I was a delivery boy not a collector of any hard cash. But there were times when her smile betrayed her and one knew that grannie would be heading down the stairs for a ‘’wee message’’ late in the afternoon. The slight flexing upwards of her lips normally coincided with the upraised bum of Mr Piggott flashing past a winning post.

In moments of extreme excitement, she would also occasionally whisper: “C’mon ya humphy-backit toerag.” This was in expectation of Mr Piggott bringing a horse home with the sort of violent exuberance that would now involve a petition to Parliament and the intervention of animal rights charities. Jessie did not mind. Her past, marked by the loss inflicted by war and the deprivations accompanying economic depression, made her aware that there were worse fates than to be a thoroughbred. She also recognised a fellow survivor in Piggott, a jockey as tough as he was talented.

It is no surprise to any of us who watched him more than 50 years ago to learn that Lester has endured to be 80 this week. Lester was always 80. As a teenage prodigy, he had the face of a professional mourner and a humour that was, well, deadpan. One always knew where one stood with Piggott and it was invariably in his shade. There are trainers who will insist there have been better jockeys than Piggott but there was never one so extraordinary. His 5ft8in frame sentenced him to a lifetime of hunger that was only partly sated by winning races. He won his first race aged 12. He was 18 when he won his first Derby (he was in the saddle for 30 Classic victories). He was closing in fast on 60 years of age when he retired after swapping riding in the Queen’s colours for residing at Her Majesty’s pleasure for tax evasion. He was loved, derided, praised and criticised by everyone who loved a punt and many that did not.

He was eloquent in the saddle. His language was that of winning. If one’s horse had a chance, then Piggott would drive it home. If he discovered he was on a no-hoper, he became as listless as a slug on absinthe. Once, when Piggott was notably restrained on a plodding hack, the trainer of the also-ran told Piggott: “You will never ride for me again.” Piggott sized up the jobbing trainer in a glance and added: “I better give up riding then.”

His ultimate triumph was not just that punters throughout the world were captivated by his brilliance and dismayed by his occasional frailty. It was that Piggott knew he was the best. Off the horse, his words could be delivered with a mumble that could be hard to decipher. On a horse, his message could be unanswerable, his allure irresistible. He would go after winning rides with all the compassion of a heat-seeking missile. The list of those "jocked off’’ by Piggott would form an illustrious appendix to any turf directory. If Piggott thought he had a better chance on another horse, he would switch rides with an athleticism only previously displayed by those chaps who jumped from horse to horse in the circus ring.

He knew horseracing was a serious business, paying proper tribute to both adjective and noun. This unspoken but almost tangible adherence to the reality that all racing is about the transference of money made Piggott a kindred spirit to my granny. He wanted to win as much as she did.

And they also shared a biting sense of humour. When her line went down – an occurrence that does not merit the term irregular – she would mutter: “I will have to cancel that tiara. And it’s spam for tea.” If granny’s target was her own fecklessness, Piggott reserved his best lines for the fallibilities of others.

Jeremy Tree, the trainer, once appealed to the great jockey: “I've got to speak to my old school about all I know about racing. What should I tell them?”

“Tell them you’ve got flu,” replied Piggott.