A NORTH YORKSHIRE mother-of-three has been revealed as the secret love child of horseracing legend Willie Carson.

Jackie Schollar, from Ripon, has never met her famous father.

The 47-year-old was the product of a relationship the five-times champion jockey had when he was a teenage apprentice at Gerald Armstrong’s stables in Middleham, near Leyburn, in the early Sixties.

It is understood that Mr Carson left North Yorkshire during the pregnancy, having decided to pursue his racing career rather than play a part in Ms Schollar’s upbringing.

He hinted at regrets over his conduct during a recent interview with BBC Radio Scotland’s Stuff of Legend’s programme.

Ms Schollar described the situation as incredibly sad, but said she had “very little feelings” for her father.

In an interview with a national newspaper, she said: “If he wanted to meet me, it would have been easier for him to come and knock on my door rather than go on the radio.

“I do not want to go and knock on his door because he would think I was there looking for money.

“I feel very little towards him, as I have never known him as a person, just a name.

“The saddest thing, for me, is that he is not even interested in meeting his grandchildren.”

Mr Carson, 66, who retired from racing in 1997, told the radio programme: “I was 19 years of age and it was an unfortunate thing.

“I had a girl in trouble, so the chap (Armstrong) says, ‘you had better get out of here’.

“He asked me whether I wanted to keep involved and I said no, so I was shipped off to Newmarket.

“I paid out of my weekly wage to the girl for 16 years, for my daughter. I have never met her. I made a conscious decision at that time to blot that out.

“Right or wrong, I do not know, but that was it.

“I have asked myself ‘was I right?’ I don’t know the answer.

Now that you get older, you think, ‘I don’t know.

Maybe I did that wrong’.”

Carson, who married his second wife, Elaine, in 1982, has three sons, Anthony, Neil, and Ross, from his first marriage.