Ryan Moore opens his front door and grunts. His gaunt face is pinched with distaste while his pale body twitches in frustration. He might be on the brink of becoming champion jockey, and aware that he is about to be asked to reflect on his monumental year in the saddle, but Moore seems angry and resentful. He looks like a surly 16-year-old who has been told that, in order to grow, he has to eat every last strand of the cabbage that has grown cold on his plate.

Before he changes tack to reveal both the startling depth of his ambition and some droll asides on a range of figures stretching from his near-legendary grandfather to Sir Alex Ferguson, Moore appears trapped in a nightmare.

An early-morning interview at home in Huntingdon, with Moore having just stepped off the scales after finding he is a pound-and-a-half over his riding weight, is a terrible way to start his day. He might have won 141 times this year, and be 31 winners ahead of his closest rival, Jamie Spencer, who has already conceded the title, but Moore's obsession makes it feel like I'm following a furious junkie into his silent house.

He clearly has not been baking bread, or even spreading butter on toast, for the smell of old socks permeates his small kitchen. "Should I come back another time?" I ask.

Moore shakes his head and slumps on a chair at the kitchen table. I take the seat opposite and, knowing there's no point in filling the sullen space between us with chit-chat, offer up a series of gentle questions. Moore returns each banal but open-ended query with monosyllabic venom.

Has his remarkable season come as a surprise even to him? "Yeah." Did he really say at the start of the year that the 8-1 odds on him becoming champion jockey were far too generous? "Yeah." Where had he expected to finish this Flat season? "Third." Where did he finish last season? "Third." Has his riding improved dramatically this year? "No." So what has made the difference? "I dunno."

A two-word answer feels like a minor triumph and I start to relax in front of the most impressively taciturn man I have ever interviewed. I look into his face, still wearing the mask of a Dickensian urchin, and suggest that he is not the shy waif I had been told to expect.