6 of the Best – Square in the Air’s Robin Hutchison

This week’s 6 of the Best comes from Robin Hutchison, Director at Square in the Air.

Read on to find out about cricketing craziness, a favourite album dilemma and a very good time at the races.

Best Holiday

Shelter Island in upstate New York at my mate’s pool house last summer. Beautiful place, great weather, and fabulous food. Watched Mayweather v McGregor in a bar with the locals, we cleaned up and drank lots of bourbon. 

Best Album

Could easily have said the Stone Roses’ debut or the Velvet Underground and Nico, but it’s probably Kind Of Blue by Miles Davis. I’ve listened to it at least once a month for the last twenty years and have an original vinyl copy hanging on the wall in my office at home. Davis on trumpet, with Coltrane and Cannonball Adderley on sax. Mind-boggling to think that it will 60 years old next year.

Best Sporting Experience

2005 Ashes. I was lucky enough to be at the Oval on the final day, having been at Lord’s on the first when 17 wickets fell. It was a brilliant series and even better to take the little urn back off the Aussies for the first time since 1987. No wonder Flintoff and co. were drunk as skunks when they turned up at Downing Street.

Best Film

Roman Polanski’s neo-noir masterpiece Chinatown if I was pushed. Jack Nicholson at his best. On the rare occasion I drink cocktails, I’ll order a Tom Collins ‘with lime not lemon’ like Faye Dunaway. And funnily enough, I find myself quoting the final line – ‘Leave it Jake, it’s Chinatown’ – when trying to do any PR in Asia for the online gaming industry…

Best Book

As I walked out one Midsummer Morning by Laurie Lee. A country boy busking round Spain on the verge of the civil war, describing the beauty and the poverty as only a poet could. Less romantically, I first read it along with Lee’s other biographical books, and most of George Orwell’s novels, on the bus home from working in a sandwich shop in Derby after I’d finished my GCSEs. Rock ‘n Roll, man.

Best Bet

Hairy Molly at 33/1 in the Champion Bumper at the 2006 Cheltenham Festival. Last race of the day, potless and pissed, having enjoyed the Guinness rather than any luck that afternoon. About 12 of us emptied our pockets of every last penny we had…and Paul Carberry got it home by a head. The woman at the Tote window went white and had to send out for more money.