Frankie Dettori, we can exclusively reveal, is currently undergoing extensive cosmetic surgery. Not the jockey but the bronze statue of Frankie about to launch his dismount. It used to greet members of the Royal Enclosure arriving at the 'old' Ascot.

It was commissioned by the racecourse after his 'Magnificent Seven' in 1996, but most people agreed that although sculptor David Roper-Curzon may be responsible for many great works of art, this was not one of them. "Who is it?" it was often asked of the bronze. A truer likeness of the jockey is to be found in Madame Tussaud's.

IT'S not particularly clever highlighting all of 'new' Ascot's teething problems. But one trainer, who had queued 45 minutes to pick up his badges, did wonder why, with Ascot having spent £210 million on the place, the man dishing out the badges was still ticking off names from two pieces of A4 paper.

It is my experience, as a newish father, that teething problems in infant beings can lead to unpleasantness in the nappy department, and that was certainly the case in the press room yesterday, where toys were also cast from prams.

Busiest, beyond doubt, were the men from Ascot's new partner Cisco Systems. Whatever happened to making a phone call? It would have been easier to access the Queen's bank account than get the apparent Ferrari of phones, the Cisco IP 7912 Series, to work with all the required User IDs, PIN numbers, Network keys, data encrypton numbers, usernames, passwords and case-sensitive SSIDs - whatever they are. Some colleagues resorted to mobile-phoning copytakers -who, obviously, have long since relocated to call-centres in Bombay.

Here's a little social observation. Yesterday in No 1 car park, which vies for the tag 'smartest car park in Britain' and where spots are handed down through the generations like family heirlooms, only one car out of a thousand sported the ubiquitous flag of St George.

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