TV VIEW:DAY THREE and Channel Four showed us a man walking around Cheltenham dressed as the map of Ireland, like you do.

Kerry, we noted, proved to be a right botheration, a danger to the public, its jutty-out nature causing havoc as the fella teetered about the place. The Dingle peninsula, in particular, left more than a few pairs of Cheltenham tights laddered, and just when they seemed to have broken free they got mangled by Cahirciveen.

Alastair Down wasn’t, though, getting into the spirit of things at all, donning a grey coat, blue jumper and a black-and-white tie.

But Alice Plunkett, bless her, looked like an extra from The Quiet Man; her green coat was more Kelly than the Kellys themselves, and her zebra-print hat sported an equally green bow. We didn’t get the zebra thing; somebody should tell her it’s not an animal native to Ireland, if you exclude Dublin Zoo and Manorhamilton.

But after she rode Devil To Pay to fourth in the final race of the day, the St Patrick’s Day Derby, Alice can be forgiven for anything, even the zebra thing. Unless, of course, a real zebra died in the making of her hat, in which case we hope she needed the fire service to disentangle her from the Dingle peninsula.

Spirits were high on the day that was in it. And nowhere were they higher than in the bowels of The Centaur which housed, Alastair told us, “about 6,000 punters who never like to be more than a yard away from the bar”.

“It’s a bit like the Colosseum in ancient Rome,” he warned Derek Thompson as he was sent in to investigate.

Once embedded, Derek reported from The Centaur front, 6,000 pint-wielding foot soldiers giving him the warmest of greetings – along the lines of “Gghkdflka pypwhd – hic – tiyeqgdyeyw.”

Okay, confession time: some of us hoped they weren’t Irish. It was with some relief, then, that they all started singing “Olé, olé, olé”.

God, what is it about the Spanish and alcohol?

Derek emerged gasping in to the daylight and fresh air, where Alastair reminded him that “Irish tails are up after yesterday”.

“D’oh,” Derek said to himself.

Breaking News from Alastair: our hot fancy Celestial Halo was one of the day’s non-runners. Reason? “Not eaten up.”

What? He never explained, forgetting that some of us only do this horse-race-watching thing once every six months.

Google. Search: horse (which, incidentally, we backed), not, eaten, up, what, the, flip, does, that, mean, thanks.

Reply: “Hasn’t eaten its food which indicates that the animal is feeling unwell and unlikely to perform at its best.” Great, a dodgy tummy.

Noble Prince, though, evidently ate like a king the night before because he, as they say in the trade, romped home in the first race of the day.

Nationality? Do you need to ask? “The Greenwash continues, another win for the Irish,” as Jim McGrath put it.

Thereafter? The greening of Cheltenham was stuck on pause.

“That’s one for the English,” said, for example, Trevor Hemmings after his Albertas Run, probably born in Ireland (wasn’t every horse?), was driven home by Irishman Tony McCoy in Michael O’Leary’s Ryanair Chase.

Look, come on, let ’em have it.

The Big One, of course, was that World Hurdle thingie, which those of us who backed Grands Crus always feared would be won by Big Buck’s – but our choice was scientifically based on the fact his apostrophe is, surely, uncalled for.

“He’s only eight years of age, what’s to stop him, like Old Man River, going on and on and on,” said RTÉ’s Colm Murray of the hat-trick horse, seemingly untroubled by the punctuation issue, although a little weighed down by the amount of shamrock in his jacket pocket.

Four green fields of the stuff.

Ruby Walsh, Big Buck’s’ driver, was happy, but peeved he had “dropped his stick” in the closing stages of the race. A “schoolboy” error, he confessed.

But his Da was there for him. “He’ll be eating himself,” Ted said.

We could only assume John McCririck had followed the punctuation route and backed Grands Crus, because the fella was exceedingly cranky when we next joined him, nigh on lost in the throngs queuing up to collect their Big Buck’s winnings.

“You look a prat and you ARE a prat, dear, so behave yourself and grow up,” he said to the exceptionally merry lady who snuck in beneath him to say a telly hello to all her loved ones.

That only encouraged the Big Bucks-laden mob to make McCririck’s life more difficult.

“Come on, grow up, stupid people,” he snapped, like a man snared by the Dingle peninsula.

Cheer up, John. As Colm told us back on RTÉ, “Tomorrow was another day”.