'There must have been 50 bookmakers in all and we had 1,000 to 30 with them all. We won fortunes, we won the lottery!'

Before the horses who shaped the career of a true pioneer came the inspiration behind it. Martin Pipe remembers his father as a tough taskmaster, but there is no disguising his admiration for the individual who had the biggest influence on his life. 

David Pipe snr was a self-made man who went from running an illegal bookmakers in his home to selling a chain of 40 betting shops to William Hill. He proved that anything was possible and, when he told his son that there was "no such word as 'can't'", Pipe took it literally. 

He had every intention of following his father into the bookmaking profession but when the family's shops were sold and he was forbidden from working for the new owners by his dad, he had no choice but to change direction.