My first trip to a racetrack was with my grandparents to Stratford, Granpa Green being interested in the dubious things that went on there. In those days, entrance was charged by the vehicle, it seemed, and so we picked up a bookie he recognised and took him in, in exchange for hearing what he thought. His plan was to lay the favourite, Pinchow, in the first. It won. I backed two horses in the same race, called Straitjacket and Seldom Daunted. Coming to the second last, both in with good chances, one fell and brought the other one down.
The first time I ever collected anything back from a bookmaker was when Coolishall made it into 4th in the 1978 National @16/1. It can't have been instant success that lured me into the game. It was actually the screen filled with the fascinating numbers before each race on Grandstand, the 100/30, 15/8 or 13/2, that shifted with some apparent bearing on what was about to happen. I was more of a numbers person before I became a word person. Football was league tables, cricket was scorecards, politics was election results.
It could have been Boxing Day 1977, and so pre-Coolishall, that I went with Fred to a 'flapping track' dog meeting, sort of unofficial and potentially dodgy, held at Gloucester City FC's Horton Road 'stadium'. Gloucester had a proper greyhound stadium at Longlevens but there was something more exciting about an unregulated event. I took the 3/1 about a dog called MacBeth, only on account of being a student of Eng Lit (me, not the dog), the bookie flipped my new trilby, said 'by the hat' and didn't bother issuing a ticket. I was pleasantly surprised to be paid out when it won, having been given no proof of purchase.
Once in employment and with a betting shop two doors down from where I worked, I was drawn back in to the downbeat community of unrealistically optimistic losers. There were people in there who knew their stuff. One lad once stayed up half the night working on a meeting that was abandoned in the morning. Word went round the market traders who frequented the place for a horse called Lochboisdale at Cheltenham that proved a pay day for the shop. By then on friendly terms with the manager - and why wouldn't he be on such terms with me when a proportion of my paltry wages contributed to his - he told me that none of them were on when it went in next time out at 9/1.
In those very early days of some sort of mobile phone, some racket could get the result of a race at Portsmouth dog track back to the shop before they knew it was off. I think they soon twigged that. But my mates among the old boys in the pub round the corner included one who heard the proper information. At first I took no notice but he pointed out what a good record those horses had and told me where the information came from. It seems like madness now to tip a horse to all 6 or 7 of one's colleagues but Leysh, each way @ 33/1 in the 1984 Cambridgeshire, made me look as if I knew what I was doing when young girls on a pittance collected nearly £20 for their 50p's each way.
By all means, it was still costing me money but one remembers the good times rather than the bad. Having salvaged not much from a bad day at Bath, I tipped it next time out in a handicap and felt as if I knew what I was doing. It was enough to stand my ground at Newbury with a particularly rough-looking trader who didn't think I'd know how much I was due on a winner ar @ 8/13.
Is that enough?
No.
He gave me another couple of quid.
What about now?
No.
After another handful of small change I didn't bother with him anymore, or ever again.
Working in Southampton, there were some legendary bets. An almost religious devotion to a horse called Randolph Place that was supoosedly on course for a Gold Cup but lost all confidence in jumping fences. Charmer was a tip from another reliable source that won its 2yo back-end maiden and very nearly the 2000 Guineas. When I went to collect the each way money on that it was wrong. No, it was ante-post and 1/4 the odds, not 1/5 for a place. I went back the next day after the manager had had a look at it.
Similarly, a big bet on a good thing at Bath, they tried to pay me out at SP, with Rule 4 and tax deductions. I showed the cashier the Racing Post results page and she grudgingly shoved me another couple of quid. The 5/4 I'd taken wasn't on the betting slip, which was their fault but left me with no evidence and I was wrong about the tax deduction because it still applied in shops but I've done little business with Ladbrokes since then. It's a conundrum whether to bet with bookmakers you don't like, giving them your business and risk losing to them, or to bet with better firms who provide a good service, win and take money off them. One got better service from a wide boy who didn't even give you a ticket at a fly-by-night track in Gloucester than one did from the shambles that was Ladbrokes that day and Betfred proved to be since.
Corals have been kinder to me than one could ever have imagined in the bad old days. If you need to know how bookmakers work, look up the odds for who will win the toss in the next test match. It'll be 5/6, each of two, but that's their percentage and your fault if you think it's a bet. Handing over cash in a shop or at the track, it was out of sight and from then on out of pocket once one had lost but the digitalisation of having all on a screen has helped enormously with fiscal control.
One doesn't feel like receiving monthly bank statements with all the transactions with bookmakers in the debit column so, in the same way that one deals with scam telephone calls, one plays them at their game and takes control. No, no, I'll play with your money, you aren't getting any more of mine.
The likes of Wayne Rooney, Alex Higgins, Paul Merson and Steve Claridge, I understand, lost thousands and thousands in pursuit of the buzz of a big win. Lucien Freud, too, to show it's not just overloaded sportspersons that got themselves unloaded. The sports people might have been good at winning in their own sport but were victims of the strange spell that bookmakers cast.
On the train to Ascot to take advantage of the generous hospitality of Corals, a loud gang of tweedy young men in caps their grandfathers might hace worn got on at Twickers and started shouting the names of all kinds of horses that obviously weren't going to win at fancy prices. I wanted to lay them at any price they wanted but the bookies only needed to offer them the likes of 8/1, 10/1, 14's, 16's, etc. and they'll have it. They must have begun their day with more money than sense but ended it with about the same amount of each.
It's not like that at all. Stay ahead. Once you are ahead, it's not too hard to do so. The big stables are always going to have winners in certain sorts of races and at certain times of year. Two winners at 6/4 out of four bets means you're in front. Whacking a packet on a 25/1 shot in the hope of instant gratification is madness.
It's a sport in itself. You sometimes need to grind it out but if you do, it's all for free, at least. At the rate I'm winning I might need to live until at least 100 to win back what I lost in the bad old days but other people spent as much, or far more, on holidays to Florida or had children and so blowing it on a rainy day at Fontwell doesn't seem so bad.
Bookmakers are by now my friends, almost my sponsors. If they want to play with me, I'll play with them. They let me choose my own horses, at their prices, but at my discretion. They can't say fairer than that.
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