Man who owned a polo pony as a child insists he is 'just a normal bloke'

Michael Sage is adamant. He is a normal person. He shops in normal shops, like Waitrose and Booths. He has, he says, “had beans on toast.”

He would simply prefer we did not dwell on the pony. Or, for that matter, on the fact that his wife calls him “horse boy”.

The CTO of The Cyber Escape Room Co. has spent years gently correcting colleagues who suggest his background might be, in any way, fancy. The corrections have not been helped by the occasional detail slipping out, such as the fact that he had a polo pony. As a child. Named, we understand, Bartholomew Ffoulkes-Ponsonby the Third.

“Lots of people had ponies,” he offered, when asked. This is not true, and he knows it is not true, but he offered it anyway with the calm confidence of a man who once had a butler.

Colleagues describe him as “lovely, brilliant, and absolutely posh”. One recalled him using the word “supper” without irony. Another watched him hesitate, visibly, before saying “toilet”.

Pressed on the pony's fate, Sage became briefly wistful, then caught himself. “It went to a lovely family,” he said. “A normal family. Like mine. Who are normal.”

He returns to running the technology of a fast-growing company in the morning, which he is, everyone agrees, exceptionally good at. Just don't mention the horse.

Update: Since publication, Sage has issued the following clarification: “For the record I did not have a polo pony, just a normal pony. I did not play polo, I played polo cross. And I really do love beans on toast.” The Ledger has noted the correction.