SOME people are just born lucky. Alas, I am not one of them.

Several of my friends, for example, were obviously at the front of the queue for great skin, hair, and nails. They never put on weight, possess a sunny disposition and have an uncanny knack for picking winners at the gee-gees.

Their turn will come, I brood peevishly as I fork out for endless 'products' at Boots, count the calories and study form in a futile attempt to emulate their good fortune.

Really, I should not even bother going to the races, especially with companions such as these. Every time I go I think it will be different, and that their luck will rub off on me.

I fantasise that the sun will shine, and I can almost picture my horse romping home in triumph instead of slinking off to the glue factory in disgrace.

Even when each race day comes around, dawning grey and blustery, and with sleety rain slamming sideways into my face, I cling to the hope that I may finally come up trumps.

Last Friday was a case in point. In spite of all the ominous climatic signs, I persisted in going along to York Racecourse for a flutter with two more fortunate companions, one of whom is particularly well-known for her spectacular luck on the horses.

What can I say? As usual, my luck rubbed off on them, and not the other way around. We shivered in our glad-rags and held on to our hats, but metaphorically lost our shirts on a series of no-hope nags.

I should know better, because in my life so far I have won nothing more than a box of fruit in a raffle and a colouring-in competition in my local newspaper as a kid.

The paper spelled my name wrongly and, perhaps because it was a football-crowd colouring-in competition, they assumed that I was a boy.

Still, it was one of the few times Lady Luck has smiled on Master Francoine Clee.

I'm amazed that anyone still agrees to go to the races with me - or, indeed, accompanies me on holiday, where I have had a run of bad luck on occasion. One particular friend has shared the curse on several trips abroad. Together, we have worn our entire holiday wardrobe and have lain shivering under beach towels and coats at night in a freezing apartment in Skiathos, in late June.

We have walked along a sodden shoreline as the wind whipped up slate-grey waves in Morocco, and we have huddled over warming cups of coffee in seafront bars in Spain, as waiters scurried to drop down their polythene weather covers.

Recently, the curse appears to have been lifted, and we have even had several holidays in which the sun has deigned to shine.

On our most recent trip, as we knocked down a cocktail and watched the sun set majestically into a milky Ionian Sea, my pal turned to me and said: "Thank God we seem to have kicked that weather problem we used to have.

"I used to wonder which one of us was jinxed, or whether it was the pair of us together that caused the problem!"

We are off to Spain again this year, in late July. Do you think I should tell her?