Offstage he was stolid – as blockish as Stravinsky's wooden Petrushka or, according to the sniffy socialites who patronised the Ballets Russes, as unimpressive as a shop assistant, a plumber's apprentice or a stable lad.
But this is broadcast media, and the power of buzz can't be overestimated: Viacom veteran Karmazin is building a talent stable with Donald Trump's newest Apprentice, Martha Stewart, who'll help shape a 24-hour gracious-living channel; Gotham DJ legend Bruce "Cousin Brucie" Morrow; freewheelin' Margaritaville balladeer Jimmy Buffett; and in January 2006, salty raconteur Howard Stern.
I auditioned on Belmont track and got a job there as an exerciser, an apprentice jockey, for a stable owner, a Vanderbilt.
Ariel Smith was named best apprentice jockey, and the Kentucky stable of William S. Farish was acclaimed the best breeder.
As we watch this session in the Sado Gatake stable, 30 minutes west of Tokyo, a skinny apprentice in outsized mawashi (loincloth) is repeatedly slapped and flung to the floor by larger men.
Last year, he joined Andrew Balding's yard here in Hampshire, a stable famed for its ability to turn out talented apprentices.
Lannes, the son of a stable boy, learned to read and write from a village priest and was apprenticed to a dyer.
Stable masters oversee strict hierarchies, only slightly exaggerated in the widely believed rumour that apprentices wipe the bottoms of the older wrestlers.
That philosophy, amped up to lethal levels, fuelled the killing of Takashi Saito, a 17-year-old apprentice who died in June 2007 after a session at one of Japan's most prestigious stables.
He was runner-up for the apprentice title in 1970, won it the following year, and in 1974, by then riding for the powerful Peter Walwyn stable, won his first senior title, making him the youngest champion since Richards in 1925 and the quickest of any to bridge the gap from leading apprentice to leading jockey.
