The Gardeners' World Blog

A few days ago, a BBC colleague from outside Sport gave me his view on Euro 2008. "As of now," he said, "I don't really care about the Euros. But I know that when it comes to June, if I'm asked to do a late meeting in the office - I won't! I'll be off to watch the football."

He is, I suspect, pretty typical. Without any of the home nations taking part, we won't have the pre-tournament talking points: the anguish of the metatarsals, the travel plans of the WAGs. But just before Christmas we sat down with our partners at ITV to agree which broadcaster would show which games - and, as we looked at the schedule, I was increasingly confident that this is going to be a great festival of football that will attract large audiences once it's underway.

I'm never at my most comfortable when I'm on the subject of horse racing. Not because I'm not a fan of the sport - but because with a name like mine I realise it can look faintly ridiculous.

But just for the record, Gallop is not some pseudonym I've adopted for the benefit of this blog - unfortunately it's the real deal.

The reason I'm here to discuss the sport of kings, is that in the coming week we are changing our horse racing service on Ceefax.

Contrary to some reports in the press, this will not mean an end to our coverage of the sport on our analogue teletext platform. What it will mean though is a different content mix and less emphasis on bookmakers’ data.