No More Mr. Wiseguy

 It is with some regret that Racetrack Wiseguy's glory, glory days have been brought to an end by dodgy bookmaker, William Hill.

They want proof of identity, having paid me out a few hundred over the last 18 months, are never satisfied with what I send them, won't communicate in much other than automated ways and so my account with a certain amount of cash in it can't be accessed.

I've said, look, just pay me that and I promise not to take any more off you but, hey, lord, they don't answer questions. It's hardly worth pursuing for all the heartache but it's an insight into the industry that's been serving me well for over a decade of consistent if not stupendous profit.

Understandably, perhaps, they prefer customers who lose consistently but it's them that chalks up the odds. There is no point winning money if it can't be transferred to my bank and horse racing is of much reduced interest if one is not thus involved so it looks as if that avenue of entertainment and modest income is curtailed which is a great shame.

 

The original William Hill was one of the shadier operators, according to his Wikipedia page, in what has always been a shady business, which was some of the glamour of it, and maybe my trick has been uncovered. My trick was being any good at it. So, the obvious answer -as with anything that ceases to have a point- is to get out of the game and walk away. It doesn't seem right but I don't like to be a righteous sort of bloke.

I've been telling anybody who's interested about when I went to a flapping track to see greyhound racing with my grandad in Gloucester on Boxing Day, 1977, I reckon it was. It doesn't get much more suspect than that. My pound on Macbeth @ 3/1 was acknowledged by a flip of the brim of my new trilby and the bookie said, 'by the hat', no ticket was issued, but he paid up okay so it's a shame that such establishments as Hill's are less honourable than a wide boy at such a meeting but what can you do.

Recent leaders of the Western world and Prime Ministers of our own country have been proved to be liars, fraudsters and self-serving incompetent scoundrels so one can hardly be surprised if business takes its moral compass from our elected representatives. In the past such things were decided by the no less scurrilous Catholic Church, as evidenced not least in the Prologue to a biography of Gerard Manley Hopkins I've just begun.

So maybe that's that. I'm not interested enough in sport to pay for it, I'd rather it paid me. It's fine for those who nurture emotional attachments to their chosen teams and participants but I'm afraid by now I don't. I suppose I'd become a 'take-out merchant' in the very smallest of ways and that's nothing to be so proud of and it's not obvious how to stay in the game.

It was good while it lasted. The last decade or so by no means made up the losses of the several decades that came before it when I was a very welcome customer at any bookmaker's but sic transit gloria mundi.

Just walk away, William Hill,

You won't see me follow you back home.