Timmy Murphy can only believe that will be so as the Cheltenham Festival approaches. In recent days, he had given up winners for Lent. Not willingly, you understand.

More enforced by circumstance; the effect of a wretched run of form. When he set out for Folkestone on Wednesday it had been 11 days, and 17 rides, since he last partnered a winner In one sense, a leading jump jockey does not object to his rides being limited during this period in which the best horses are being readied for the festival. Yet, the craving for victory still remains.

In the event, that desire was sated when his 11-2 on shot Christdalo - trained by David Pipe, and owned by David Johnson, with whom Murphy has a retainer - recorded a facile triumph over poor opponents. One ride, for owner's prize money of �3,578. True, it enabled him to leap a place to third in the jockeys' table. But still, given that the M25 ensured he endured a fourhour journey before his BMW delivered him back home to Shrivenham, near Swindon, it was hardly worth the day out was it?

He laughs. "Oh, I was going to be there, all right, " says the Kildare man.

"Thank God, I'm off the 'cold' list. It was getting to me, I admit it. You know it'll turn eventually. But it does get under your skin a bit when the winners aren't coming in."

Timmy Murphy. In so many ways, the name stands atop an admirable CV.

Talent fulfilled and reputation lauded in his chosen career. Winner of the Irish Grand National, Hennessy Cognac Gold Cup, Cheltenham's Arkle, amongst many. He is a devoted son. A proud father. Due to be married next summer, to his fiancee Verity, an events organiser for MacMillan Cancer Relief.

And yet. He will never detach the badge of dishonour pinned to his lapel. That of ex-con.

You scrutinise features which not just his mother would describe as angelic, and search for the lines and shadows you somehow anticipate - the legacies of alcoholism, the 84-day prison sentence in Wormwood Scrubs, and most of all the humiliation of it all - but discover little evidence. You detect just a hint of wariness in the 32-year-old jockey, but otherwise the shyness which he contends first persuaded him of the virtues of the demon drink has disappeared to be replaced by a genial confidence.

We discuss the festival, where his tally is six winners, though it has not always been kind to him. The 1998 run when Paul Nicholls's See More Business was carried out, after Tony McCoy's mount Cyborgo broke down in front of him, was the worst. "A real kick in the backside - the best chance I've had of winning the Gold Cup."

Perhaps just as galling was the fact that See More secured victory the following year. Only it was Mick Fitzgerald who was aboard. By then Murphy and Nicholls had separated. It was not the first occasion he had lost jobs over the years, because of poor time-keeping - largely the result of his alcohol consumption - and the "horrendous" (his description) number of whip bans he then incurred.

The fires of self-destruction within him have been dowsed. That is, in part, the consequence of his religious faith.

"I don't go to church every day, like I used to, " he says. "But I still believe that there's someone up there keeping an eye on us; maybe not on what we do physically, but definitely on what we do mentally. I don't pray that I'll win a race. But I do pray to keep calm, and not get too wound up. That's where it helps."

Scrutinise him at Cheltenham and you will witness the consummate technician, one deploying persuasive finesse.

The Gold Cup still eludes him. This year, Johnson's Our Vic is entered for the festival centre-piece although Pipe's nine-year-old is more likely bound for the Ryanair Chase. "I've also got Well Chief in the Queen Mother; hopefully he'll be my best ride." Yet, whatever his fate within the confines of that idyllic open-air theatre, you sense that he quietly offers a prayer for just being there at all. Five years ago, as Murphy says, "it was a very dark pit I was looking into, and there was no sign of light."

He had been arrested at Heathrow when he arrived on a flight from Japan after riding in the �400,000 Nakayama Grand Jump. It was claimed that he had grabbed a stewardess's leg and moved his hand up it, and had then urinated on the wall and floor of the aircraft. By the time his case reached Isleworth Crown Court, he had already looked at himself hard in a mirror of enlightenment and not liked the reflection. He had booked into The Priory, where he received treatment for his alcoholism. He is still off the booze.

Murphy was not in a position to dispute the prosecution case, because he appears to have been in an alcoholic stupor and, to this day, doesn't remember a thing about the flight. He was advised to plead guilty, and hope for leniency.

It was hope that evaporated when he was sent down for six months for being drunk on an aircraft and for indecently assaulting the stewardess. His destination was Wormwood Scrubs; not renowned for its five-star pampering regime. He was also placed at first, erroneously, as it transpired, on the sex offenders' register, with all the implications that has in jail.

"The worst moment of all was to have people banging on your door, calling you a rapist, saying that you were going to be stabbed and when you came out of your cell your number was up, " Murphy recalls. "The scary bit is not knowing anyone, and not knowing who you could trust." Fortunately, an officer who was a racing fanatic arranged for the 10-stone jockey to share his cell with a prisoner who reminded him of Mike Tyson. "If you don't annoy me or get in my way we'll get on fine, " his cell-mate advised him.

So, Murphy didn't. The guy ended up looking out for him.

You suggest that, presumably, he hadn't made too many friends for life during his time inside. "I do see a few of the guys at Sandown, walking around the parade ring, " he says. Honestly?

He nods.

But what about when he was released through those gates? Murphy believed he would be a pariah in the closelyknit racing village, and where the public was concerned. "It never got so bad that I was thinking of doing myself in, or anything like that, " he says. "I have a family, and it wouldn't have done them any good. At first, I thought I'd leave the country, and ride work abroad. But I soon realised that because I had a record I wouldn't get a visa anywhere."

Then the supportive letters began to arrive, sent not just by family and friends, but by complete strangers. He keeps the correspondence upstairs, under his bed. To an extent, the jury of public opinion was speaking. "A lot of people thought I was hard done by and that might have been a factor, " he says.

"Maybe I was, maybe I wasn't." However, he remains impressively devoid of self-pity. He fully acknowledges his folly.

Once he left prison, trainers rallied round. "Everyone was fantastic, especially Mark Pitman and Michael Hourigan. I knew I could ride their horses, and a few of Hen's (Henrietta Knight).

All the lads in the weighing room were great and I couldn't believe the reception I got from the public."

Yet, within himself, shame was the over-riding emotion; the shame he felt he had inflicted on his family. On his mother Helen and and on his father Jimmy, a stud groom, who had provided lessons in the academy of hard knocks when Murphy was a child. The pair used to have races round a field, young Murphy on a 13.2-hand pony, Bluebell, and his father, on a 16-hand horse. His father would squeeze him against the railings. It forced the boy to fight for his ground.

"Dad used to drive me mad, " says Murphy. "But it was what he taught me when then that probably made me the rider that I am today."

His father has never broached the court case. "My dad's very set in his ways and I can't imagine how he dealt with it, " Murphy says. "I suppose he's read the book now." The book is the jockey's autobiography, an exceptionally-written self-analysis, which is almost too damnably honest for his own good. Yet, he regards writing it as "self-medication".

The prescription is not one he keeps to himself. "A good few of the young lads come to me and ask advice, " Murphy says. "You do see some who are going the wrong way, things are happening a bit quick for them, and they're just getting a bit big for their boots. They're just trying to hard and mistakes are happening. If my story only saves one lad from going the same way as me it's done its job." He pauses. "Not that I see myself as a preacher." But then sometimes the lesson is read more emphatically by the reformed sinner.