Dunlop is joking. Sort of. Maybe he doesn't know how close he is to the mark.

If someone claimed the most popular horse in the country responsible for fabled horses, including Phar Lap, Tulloch, Might and Power and Makybe Diva, was a giant nine-year-old chestnut from England who barely wins (seven times from his 49 starts) and has never won here, you'd suggest they had spent too much time in the marquees.

"An Englishman can't say that about an Australian racehorse," says Dunlop of his earlier remark. "But he would be pretty high, I would've thought."

You think?

Red Cadeaux is the thoroughbred once-a-year punters know better than their way home on Melbourne Cup day, because of his three brave second placings over the 3200 metres at Flemington.

In 2011, he was "beaten by technology", when he missed out to Dunaden by two pixels on the replay. He came second to Fiorente in 2013.

Last year, he hit the front with 300m left to play, only to be headed by the German stayer Protectionist, who held on to finish first.

When the horses returned to the mounting yard, though, it was clear who the real winner was.

The popularity of Red Cadeaux was there for all to see as the throng of connections, greencoats, media, photographers and cameras jammed in front of the stall reserved for the horse that came second. Weirdly, the winner of the 2014 Melbourne Cup was almost friendless. An afterthought, seemingly.

"They [VRC official officials] did say to me thank God you didn't win because they would've wrecked the place," says Dunlop's No.1 travelling foreman, Robin Trevor-Jones. "There was so much people in the second enclosure, watching this horse come in, and not taking as much notice of the winner. Which was wrong, because he won very well."

On Saturday at Royal Randwick, Red Cadeaux lines up in the $4 million Queen Elizabeth Stakes (2000m) and many experts will have run a line through his name in their racebooks.

Thousands more ten-buck punters, though, will back him anyway - he's about $35 in betting - hoping he can spring an ambush.

"He's gone all over the world," Trevor-Jones says. "England, Ireland, Japan, France, Dubai, Singapore, Hong Kong five times … and Australia five times. He has fans all over the world.

"But in Australia it is different. When we arrive at Werribee [the quarantine outside of Melbourne where the international horses are stabled] there will be 20 people just standing around to watch him at trackwork.

"When we first arrived last year, we had a lady and gentleman who had travelled 2½ hours to see him have a canter and a trot. It's humbling, the amount of affection he has in Australia."

Trevor-Jones knows the horse better than anyone. Better than Dunlop, who admits he just "flies in, speaks to the press and flies back out again". The only other person who knows Red Cadeaux as well is regular trackwork rider Steve Nicholson.

"The mister and missus," laughs Dunlop of the pair, both of whom are 52 years old. "The mother and father - and the horse is the child. They're as an important as the horse. I play a smallish part in it. Their dedication and the amount of time they've put into him … They've been away for over two years now [in total]. Now they're like an old married couple. One goes this way at the end of the day, one goes that way, but they have an undying affection for this horse."

Trevor-Jones is best identified by an elegant walking stick, which he has pushed into tracks all over the world to see if they are suitable for Red Cadeaux to race on.

I ask him what his wife thinks of him being away for so much of the year as he chaperones the superstar second-placegetter that is Red Cadeaux all over the racing world.

"No wife," he says. "I had a girlfriend. I don't know if I'll have one when I get home."

She comes second to the horse, then?

"They always do. We are away a long time."

Red Cadeaux is owned by former Hong Kong Jockey Club chairman Ron Arculli, who has also been at the helm of the Hong Kong stock exchange. He has deep pockets.

He needs to, tipping in the $200,000 it costs per trip to dispatch the horse from his box at Newmarket in England to every corner of the globe. If not for Arculli, who won't be trackside on Saturday as he attends to business in Canada, the jet-setting horse does not exist.

He told Dunlop nearly a decade ago that he believed Red Cadeaux was "my Melbourne Cup horse".

Dunlop recalls: "I thought Ronnie had gone a bit bonkers - but he was right. As a two-year-old, the horse struggled to get up Warren Hill, which is the training track at Newmarket. I thought, 'Gawd, this looks useless'. My vet Mike Shepherd said he'd be a nice horse one day. He started with a very low handicap rating, and then he started getting better and better."

Red Cadeaux has now officially won more money than any other horse in British racing history - $7,345,000 in the racebook, or just under $9 million if you convert his winnings from British pounds on today's exchange rates - despite only ever winning a singular group one, the Hong Kong Vase. That was 2012 - and his last race victory.

"He's the most successful horse - and he never wins!" Dunlop says. "That's from being a bridesmaid. There are times when we wonder, 'Should he have won?' I still think he should've won the first Melbourne Cup. To be beaten two pixels …"

Well, yes. Two pixels. If not for technology, it would've been at least a dead-heat. That one still hurts, Trevor-Jones admits.

"Course it does," he says. "Course it does. That's what beat him - technology. That's the only thing that beat him. Hurt? Yes at first. But seconds later you reflect on how well the horse has run, and you are proud of him."

Red Cadeaux's bravery on the track belies his calm and affectionate nature away from it.

"If people knew what he's like away from the track, they'd love him more," says Nicholson. "He's the gentlest horse you'd find."

When he arrived in Melbourne last spring, having spent 38 hours travelling from box to box, he immediately jumped in the sandpit and rolled around like a two-year-old.

To give him a change of scenery from Werribee, Trevor-Jones and Nicholson took him to Altona beach.

"He'd never seen sea before," Trevor-Jones recalls. "He'd never seen waves. So I'm like a stupid Pom in a pair of yellow shorts and a T-shirt. He stood there, looked at me as if to say, 'What does he want?' And then he followed me into the sea."

That demeanour changes, however, when it's time to race.

"Watch when he walks out to that track," Trevor-Jones says. "He'll march through that tunnel, knowing this is the time for war. He walks out that way."

Red Cadeaux will be walking out for the Queen Elizabeth and not the Sydney Cup (3200m) as first anticipated because of Sydney's fickle weather.

Trevor-Jones walked the Randwick track earlier this week, shoving his walking stick in and out of the ground, looking for clues.

Here at Canterbury on Thursday morning, he pulls out his mobile phone and shows a short video of him doing so. The sun might be out, but it shows the stick going deep into the "gluey and sticky" surface.

He and Nicholson know how tough their horse is. They've seen him come back from Melbourne Cups completely gassed.

But two miles on the Randwick track might be too much of a test for the nine-year-old nearing the end of his racing career.

He finished fifth on a good track in the Australian Cup at Flemington on March 14. They resisted running him in the BMW at Rosehill a fortnight ago.

"We're taking a punt that the ground will stay soft," Trevor-Jones says.

Dunlop puts it more succinctly: "He is old".

Which brings us to the delicate but unavoidable point: how much longer can Red Cadeaux keep this worldwide tour going? He's not the Rolling Stones. The party will need to end, at some stage.

"He'll tell us," Nicholson says. "If it's this year, it's this year. Any time he doesn't run to form, we know why. The trip or the track. But when it's time he will let us know."

And when it is, it will be time for him and Trevor-Jones to go home.

Nicholson won't tell me if he's got a girlfriend waiting for him back in England.

"I go all right," he says.

And what about his mate? Trevor-Jones, not Red Cadeaux?

"It could just be him and his stick for the rest of his life."