RALPH Fiennes is no stranger to wild and whacky storylines, having spent time in the worlds of Harry Potter, James Bond and Wes Anderson during his acclaimed career as an actor.

Of course, those stories are fictional, so I wonder what he made of the surreal theatre of Tattersalls this week, as he attended Park Paddocks in preparation for his depiction of Sir Henry Cecil in the feature Unbeaten, centring around the late trainer’s Frankel years.