Ed Chamberlin on presenting the Randox Health Grand National

On Randox Health Grand National day, when I hear the voice of the director’s assistant in my ear saying “one minute before on air”, my heart is beating out of my chest.

I’ve worked in television for 21 years and the most nervous I’ve been were for my first Monday Night Football on Sky Sports with Gary Neville and Saturday, April 8th, 2017 and the opening Grand National back on ITV.

I am very privileged to become just the seventh host of the great race on terrestrial television and that comes with a huge responsibility. The National means so much to so many people, not just in this country but around the world.

It does prey on your mind when you can’t sleep on the Friday night that you’re presenting to 100s of millions of people the next day.

I remember talking to Victoria Pendleton about the work she’d done with leading sports psychologist Steve Peters about removing self doubt. He uses the chimp paradox and it helps me too. In the minutes before going on air your mind is playing tricks on you; “you’ll forget your lines Ed…what’s that horse’s name again…”. Managing the chimp is part of the process.

The Grand National is the race that got me into racing and from the late 1980s onwards I started going every year. To begin with, when at college, we went to the Canal Turn where there was a big party and the cheapest tickets.

By the time Party Politics won in 1992 I was earning money and could afford to upgrade to the grandstand enclosure. As I’ve said before the aim then was to try and get on TV behind Des Lynam which I finally managed during one of his memorable interviews with Jenny Pitman.

When it comes to presenters, Des is the king of the National. He was a hero of mine before I even started in front of the camera and I’ve watched many hours of clips of him presenting from Aintree on the big day.

I’m often criticised, as a presenter, for knowing little about the sport. Well Des is proof that can actually be a strength – not a weakness. He was a master at steering the ship on chaotic days – none more so than the bomb scare of 1997. Few who saw it will forget then Aintree chief Charles Barnett being interviewed by the great man and saying “everyone must leave the racecourse now – and that includes you”.

He’s the best interviewer, always asking the right questions to get the best out of people, and his greatest skill is in letting the pictures do the talking.

I was so thrilled when he agreed to be part of our coverage, looking back on both the bomb scare and the race that never was in Gabrial Clarke’s fantastic features.

I’m not fit to lace his boots – but like the rest of the ITV team have put my heart and soul into our coverage. The biggest deciding factor in me leaving Premier League football to come to racing was the thought of presenting this race to a terrestrial audience.

Inevitably not everyone will like the way we’ve done it but we had a number of aims on our first National day, fundamentally to try and make one the great spectacles in sport accessible to all.

I wanted our older viewers to feel like teenagers again on the first Saturday in April. The best way to do that was to bring back the familiar and haunting Champions music and use iconic voices such as Des and the late, great, Hugh McIlvaney.

I’ll never forget his brilliant words, alongside the Champions theme, that opened our coverage in 2018. “Very few sports events magnetise the attention of the nation as powerfully as the Grand National.”

Our next target was to make people feel part of Grand National day at Aintree. This is where our multi-BAFTA-winning director Paul McNamara came into his own.

Before ITV won the contract he had barely watched a race let alone worked in the sport, which again worked as a strength. He brought a totally fresh pair of eyes to the coverage and seemed to have cameras everywhere across the vast Aintree estate.

The horses are obviously at the centre of what we do. Welfare is such an important aspect to a modern-day Grand National and what an amazing job the BHA and the team at Aintree have done with that, moving with the times.

A personal favourite moment of mine is when Alice Plunkett and Francesca Cumani get up close to every one of the 40 runners in the paddock. Just listening to the talkback and chaos in the ITV truck as they battle to make this happen is an event in itself.

What I’ve learned over the three years covering the great race is just how clever the Aintree chairwoman Rose Patterson and her team of Grant Rowley, Jessica Dalgliesh and John Baker have been in linking the racecourse with the local community.

They’ve won numerous awards for doing so and it’s something we try to reflect in our coverage. It’s a benchmark too for other big days – such as the Investec Derby at Epsom. If you can connect with local people and give them an event to be proud of then you are in business.

One of the highlights of what’s been a pretty depressing year was working with the Liverpool Singing Choir at the Grand National weights lunch and interviewing John Lennon’s sister Julia.

Just what the race means to the city was summed up when she recalled John calling home on the morning of the race to find out who’d got what in the family sweepstake.

In terms of the National we’ve been unlucky with the weather every year on ITV – all three have been baking hot. That might sound strange but when I open my hotel room curtains and see glorious sunshine on that one Saturday, my heart sinks.

Weather is the biggest single influence on viewing figures – by which we’re judged. In our first year I well remember stories about how supermarkets had sold out of charcoal on National day as families headed outside for barbecues.

But our job is to tell the stories and we’ve been blessed with wonderful ones so far.

Year one was the perfect scenario from our perspective, small owners showing dreams can come true as The Two Golf Widows welcomed One For Arthur back to the winners’ enclosure

From a personal perspective it was an emotional moment. My late grandfather was the person who first got me into racing with his love for the National and every year he used to back a Scottish-trained runner.

He died in the late 1980s and hadn’t had a winner since Rubstic struck in 1979. I hope he’d have been very proud, seeing his grandson present the race and hearing Richard Hoiles roar “Scottish flags are flying high at Aintree” in the commentary.

Winning the BAFTA a few months later for our coverage of the 2017 National was the proudest moment of my television career. Editor Richard Willoughby, Paul McNamara, the whole team, had worked so hard on the meeting. None of us had ever done anything like it in our careers before. It was amazing.

Since then we have been spoiled by a little horse called Tiger Roll who has resonated with young and old around the world. That’s why it’s so sad not to be at Aintree right now, building up to his bid for a hat-trick and what would have been the biggest racing story for decades.

However sad is the wrong word to use at this time. It was absolutely the right decision to have cancelled the National and our focus must be on thinking of the NHS workers on the frontline and everyone else who is keeping the country going.

It’s also important to remember the joy and happiness that racing’s greatest spectacle brings to so many and let’s all reconvene at Aintree in 2021 and appreciate one of the world’s biggest sporting events more than ever before.