In defence of betting - a glorious pastime that has brought many cherished (and sometimes illicit) memories

Hold your horses, I cried recently when I read that "a third of the population believe gambling should be banned altogether", according to the Social Market Foundation.

Gambling addiction is a terrible curse. A little of it is too much, but there is regulation and more will come. Shares in betting operators are down from "regulatory headwinds". But a ban?

Just as a drink or two doesn’t make an alcoholic, so a bet or two doesn’t make an addict. 

I come from a racing family. I don’t mean that anyone actually rode, let alone trained horses. I have always thought them beautiful but great big dangerous things with a mind of their own. Stand clear; watch from the rails. We weren’t owners, although Uncle Walter made a pile building houses and did buy one or two racehorses after he’d got his Rolls. That was later.

No, both sides of my family were bricklayers in and around Oxford and liked a bet. My grandmother would venture, “Got anything good for today?” One of her boys was a foreman whose boss, knowing his predilection, liked to niggle him by disguising his voice to ring with phoney racing tips. 

Another of the boys, Percy, conducted one of the racing fiddles that ran in the family. There were no betting shops then and bookmakers, legal and otherwise, handled many postal bets in their office as well as (illegally) collecting slips from pubs and workplaces. Percy’s wheeze was to post envelopes to himself with a lightly written pencil address, the flap not stuck down. He would receive it the following day. As soon as he discovered the early afternoon racing results, he would write out a bet on one of the winners, seal the envelope and readdress it, this time in ink. Next morning he would slip it through the bookie’s door along with the rest of the post. The postmark was timed the day before the race and thus the bet apparently valid.

This couldn’t last. One day Percy got his timing wrong and was caught pushing his envelope through the door well after the postman had delivered. The scam ended.

Ron, close in age to my father, told me about a cunning swindle he and a friend devised. They drew up a code of tunes, each standing for a number between one and 16. The friend would wander into the bookie’s upstairs office with the amount of his bet, the time and place of the race already written out but not the number of the horse. 

Affordability checks petition

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Bookmakers had no live commentary so there was a delay between the race finish and the result reaching the bookie. The friend would chat to the bookie to distract him while Ron used a phone box nearby to get the result from the course. He then walked past the bookmaker’s window whistling the tune that signified the number of the winner. The friend would say, “I’d better get on with it,” add the number to his betting slip and pass it over. Soon the 'blower' would announce the result and, lo and behold, the bet was a winner. Ron grinned like a lad with an extra portion of ice cream as he described this to me. “It worked – for a while,” he added.

My father, the youngest of the family, had a friend, Aubrey Cooke, whose father operated as a bookmaker in Oxford. Aubrey used to collect the (illegal) bets from offices and building sites; his father collected them from pubs in east Oxford at lunchtime, after which he would go home and fall into a beery sleep. Aubrey bought the early afternoon edition of the local paper which carried results of the first three races. He would write out bets on a couple of the winners in Dad’s name and slip them into the sleeping man’s satchel. When his father awoke, Aubrey would say as casually as he could manage that he thought a friend had a winner. Cooke snr would search his bag and, sure enough, there was a winning bet. Aubrey and Dad split the proceeds.

My own love of the gee-gees began with trips to the Silver Ring at Newbury. I adopted a simplistic method, backing horses who had been third and second in their latest outings in the optimistic belief that this indicated an improving animal. So it might, but my naivety made no allowance for the standard of the races nor the changing weight carried by horses in handicaps. I learned about this and my study became closer. I recall plotting the positions I predicted for every Derby runner after the first two furlongs, at the top of the hill, at Tattenham Corner and passing the post. 

Will recalls some of the great days' punting he's had at Newbury and other tracksCredit: Edward Whitaker

I saw every race as a puzzle. If I accumulated enough information and concentrated hard, I would be able to figure out the result. It did not occur to me for years that there is no result until the race is run and a multitude of variables, impossible to anticipate, would affect what happened. My selection, my bet, was not the solution to a puzzle, just a possible outcome at given odds.

I soon knew the colours of major owners: chocolate and green for the Aga Khan, white and maroon for Major Holliday, pale blue with pink sash for Lord Astor and more. Every day I read the Daily Express’s racing correspondents, Clive Graham, ‘The Scout’ and Peter O’Sullevan. More than 40 years later I shared a glass of champagne with Peter after his final television commentary at Newbury. 

And so it goes. I know that in spite of many profitable days, weeks and even months, overall I am out of pocket. But with a prudent betting strategy and laying out only what I don’t mind losing, I am buying fun. Wade into the water gradually and don’t get out of your depth.

Once more unto the Racing Post, dear friends, once more, as we seek to solve that most teasing, most enticing and eternally repeated mystery: what’s going to win the next?

Will Wyatt is a former chair of Racecourse Media Group and managing director of BBC Television

Read more on the Gambling Review here:

Punters must unite to ward off the Affordability Police 

Everyone involved in racing at any level urged to sign petition against affordability checks 

Five reasons you should sign the affordability checks petition   

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