He overcame problems with alcohol, which had led to a prison sentence after a drunken incident on a plane in 2002, to resume a successful career and win the 2005 jump jockey of the year Lester Award.

[1]: 119  He rode 60 winners that season, in spite of a total of 52 days' suspension for use of the whip, but lost his job in November 1998, due mainly to his lack of communication with owners.

The race is remembered for the atrocious wet and muddy conditions in which it was run and for a pile-up caused by a loose horse at the Canal Turn on the first circuit.

[1]: 162  That summer Nicholls asked him to return to his yard at Ditcheat as stable jockey and the 2001/02 was Murphy's most successful to date, with 98 winners by mid-April.

[1]: 172-8  In July 2002 he pleaded guilty to being drunk on an aeroplane and to sexual assault at Isleworh Crown Court and was sentenced to six months in prison.

[1]: 187  After his release from Wormwood Scrubs, Murphy went to Ireland and spent a few weeks with trainer Michael Hourigan before returning to race riding.

It was Hourigan's horse Beef Or Salmon who provided Murphy with the victories he needed to rebuild his career, winning the Ericsson Chase in December 2002 and the Irish Gold Cup in February 2003.

[3] In 2009 Murphy rode his eighth, and final, Cheltenham Festival winner with Chapoturgeon, trained by Nicholls, in the Centenary Novices' Handicap Chase.

[5] In 2010 and 2012 he rode Merigo, trained by Andrew Parker and owned by Murphy's father-in-law Ray Green, to victory in the Scottish Grand National.

[3] In December 2013 Murphy was suspended for nine days after starting a fight in the weighing room, during which his shoulder was discolated when he was restrained by a jockeys' valet.

The trainer, himself a former National Hunt jockey, said that Murphy's style of riding would stand him in good stead in flat racing: "One thing that he has always been is a master of almost smuggling a horse through from A to B as efficiently as possible".

[9] Murphy met his partner Dawn Symonds, who was a work rider for trainer Mark Pitman, in 1999 and the couple had a son, Shane, in December 2000.

[7] In 2002, Murphy was sentenced to six months imprisonment for indecently assaulting an air stewardess on a Virgin Atlantic flight from Tokyo to London Heathrow.