WHO should be pictured in last weekend’s edition of The Irish Times business pages, above the caption “Last customers head home from Henry Street”, but sisters Jean and Angela Farrell. I was quite moved to see the current crisis represented by two individuals that I know, both of whom have possibly attended more race meetings than such seasoned ladies of the turf as Maureen Mullins, Valerie Cooper or Jessica Harrington. Indeed, the majority of racegoers will have met the two of them offering racecards on the way in, or peddling bags of fruit and a fistful of chocolate on the way out.

It begged the question, who are these ladies that are such a unique feature of Irish racing, many of them second generation in my lifetime? Rather like seagulls, they seem to appear from nowhere, then return into the city whence they came. They are known to so many of us yet are listed in no Turf directory, nor recognised by any of the many regulatory authorities.

I tried this week to track down Jean or Angela from numerous owners, trainers, commentators and racecourse managers. Plenty could tell me that they live in the Liberties, but nobody had a number for them.

Selling skills

To be honest, anybody rushing at me with a bag of fruit is going to have their selling skills sorely tested. However, the image of these two Dubliners, accessorised, as you might expect, with a shopping trolley (complete with Goffs umbrella) but also sporting facemasks, is a photograph that will endure as a memory of these dark days.

It is some years now since the closure of their local racecourse, the Phoenix Park, where I first remember meeting them, and the Covid-19 fallout will surely not be their first experience of tricky times.

I hope that Jean and Angela, and all their colleagues (or perhaps competitors) remain safe. Perhaps somebody might even contemplate how a week in their company would make for a fascinating television programme. When all our lives return to some normality, buying a Toblerone on the way out of the racecourse will never have felt as good before.