34

IN WHICH… I BET ON MY FUTURE CAREER

Initially, I expected that by launching a new career with William Hill, after my short stint in the building world, my interest in records would have to take a back seat, as I would probably now stop receiving the review copies which had helped so much. I wasn’t expecting to remain a bookie for long, so I wasn’t over-concerned. Oddly enough, while it can be difficult enough to get on to a press mailing list for all kinds of products, it is often even more difficult to get off it. Particularly if you don’t try too hard to do so. I’d already managed to persuade some of the record companies to send review copies and information to my home address for fear that other interested parties might start intercepting them before they reached my desk at the Post. Which meant that, having somehow forgotten to let them know that I was no longer churning out the Record Rendezvous column, I continued receiving press releases and review request forms which I may have sent back occasionally. I did my best to continue to publicise the records I received – the Hatch End FC Newsletter may seem an offbeat publication to feature record reviews, but footballers buy records too!

Within a couple of years, I had moved through the boardman-counter hand-bet settler-assistant manager chain of betting shop command, and when a colleague from the branch around the corner decided to move on, taking the contents of the safe with him, I was promoted to manager. It was a great job, which I really enjoyed. There weren’t then most of the restrictions that there are today and not so much of the frowning disapproval from people who have never gambled on anything in their lives and believe deep down that others should not be allowed such a legal outlet for their interest.

As I began to realise that, if I were to have any chance of returning to journalism, I’d probably need to leave William Hill I spotted an advertisement in the Sporting Life, the best read national horse- and greyhound-racing daily newspaper. It had been placed by William Hill, who were looking for someone to work in their Advertising Department, as it was described in the days before Public Relations, Press Offices and Marketing Departments became de rigueur for large companies. The company’s managing director, Sam Burns, was, for some reason, conducting the job interview. Noticing that my CV showed I was already an employee of the company, he frowned at me from over his glasses and said grumpily, ‘Suppose that means I should offer you the job…’

My delight was tempered when my boss-to-be, Mike, walked in, and asked, ‘Is this him?’ When told that it was, he directed his next question to me: ‘Has he told you...?’ He was interrupted by the MD who tried to push him out of the room, but before he left, Mike called over his shoulder, ‘…you’ll have to work weekends, Bank Holidays and evenings without any extra pay?’ Just like being back at the Weekly Post, I thought, indicating that wouldn’t be a problem and wondering whether William Hill had a football team. (It did. I later played for it and when sent off, thus risking a ban for my real club, I gave the name of the then MD, Len Cowburn.)

Once settled into the job, I realised that my success depended on persuading the national press to write about bookmaking in general and William Hill in particular as frequently as possible. I wondered whether there might be a way of incorporating records within that brief, and came up with the idea that the company should start taking bets on records making the charts.

One of the more noteworthy bets of this nature occurred in 1979 when I was approached by Island Records. They had signed a group called U S of A, whose new single was called ‘2/1 I Bet Ya’. Island said that to support the record they wanted to place a £5000 bet that it would make the Top 10. We accepted the bet at odds of 10/1, and Island decided that they would also design the cover of the record to look like a betting slip, which, uniquely, they did. None of this managed to help the record to become any sort of hit. I also devised a long-term ‘Christmas Number One’ betting market, which rapidly became one of our, and other ‘copy-cat bookies’, most popular ‘set-piece’ bets of the year, with speculation about the next year’s festive chart-topper beginning virtually the moment this year’s was revealed. Some shrewd, well informed punters would target the Xmas chart market and we often found ourselves facing a hefty pay-out.

It wasn’t only genuine punters placing bets. The PR team behind an absolute dirge of a record by a well-known actor plunged hundreds of quid on it at what even at 500/1 were hardly generous odds. Bookies invariably shorten odds when enough cash is staked, so down came the price to 100/1. The plugging team went in again and again… and again, eventually causing a media stir, with my help, as the feeble 45 at one point became 5/2 favourite. Once people actually got to hear the caterwauling, I think it ended up selling about a dozen copies and reaching around Number 578 in the official charts, but the pluggers had achieved their aim of creating a buzz, in the process generating publicity for William Hill.

Christmas 1989 definitely produced an orchestrated, and this time successful, gamble on Band Aid’s charity single, ‘Do They Know It’s Christmas?’ taking the festive honours for the second time – but those in the know overplayed their hand by trying to get a ten grand (£10,000) wager on, which instantly sounded the alarm bells. We turned that bet down and quickly slashed the odds to foil the attempted coup, which would have had more chance of producing a bigger pay-out had they drip-fed smaller, less noticeable bets into the market. I had no qualms at turning those involved away once it became obvious what was happening – after all, they were hardly likely to be placing the bets in order to donate their winnings to the charity…

In 1993, Take That were confidently expected to land the Xmas Number One spot – only to fall foul of Noel Edmonds’ pink and yellow pal, Mr Blobby! Noel showed support for his spotted sidekick by betting £2000 that his record would win the honour – which he did, embarrassing Gary, Robbie and, er, the other Take That blokes in the process. Serious pop punters had been convinced Take That were absolute certainties with their ‘Babe’ and bet on them accordingly, forcing their odds to shorten drastically. However, they were spectacularly undone by what would subsequently be often voted the worst song of all time. Mr Blobby communicated only by saying the word ‘blobby’ in an electronically altered ‘voice’, yet the single reached No 1 on 11 December. A week later, ‘Babe’ demoted Mr Blobby from top spot for one week. Once again Take That’s odds collapsed as punters bet on them as though defeat were out of the question. I genuinely believed that the ‘Mr Blobby’ track was going to be one of those novelty Christmas presents with which all parents love to help pad out the sackful of goodies to give their kids. Thus it proved… ‘Mr Blobby’ made a surprise return to the Number 1 spot on Christmas Day. I did buy a copy of the single for my then very young son, Paul. He has now finally forgiven me.

The Blobby coup inspired other bizarre bids for Xmas glory over the years, adding some seldom-played discs to my collection. For example, in 1999 the BBC News website reported: ‘A bunch of all-singing, all-dancing hamsters are threatening to top the charts. The hamster-dance recording using sampling from a cult website is being tipped as this year’s Christmas Number One.’ A year later, there was another unlikely figure atop the Xmas chart, as the theme song from the kids’ show Bob the Builder took the top spot.

For a few years, The X Factor almost killed off Xmas No 1 betting, as the show ensured that its winner would have a single rushed out to storm the festive chart. But a reaction against this virtual ‘rigging’ of the outcome saw an organised campaign to defeat The X Factor by outlier US rock group Rage Against The Machine, which was reckoned so unlikely to succeed that three-figure odds were offered against it happening – yet it ultimately did.

The spin-off from the Xmas No 1 market was that we began to receive requests for bets to hit No 1 at any time of the year. Just how difficult it was to protect ourselves against ‘inside information’ became evident when, in January 1991, I was approached by a Mr Parsons, asking for odds that The Clash would top the singles’ rankings before the end of the year. Having checked out their previous singles – ‘London Calling’ had been their biggest, making No 11 in 1979 – I figured 50/1 was a safe price to quote about a group I then regarded as punk has-beens, whose heyday was several years earlier. A few more bets on the same eventuality encouraged me to do additional research, and I was very concerned to discover that the band’s 1982 track, ‘Should I Stay or Should I Go’ (no question mark) had been chosen to launch a multi-million pound advertising campaign to promote Levi jeans. Still, when originally released it only managed to reach No 17, so I didn’t panic. But I wasn’t feeling like a jeanius when the record charged to No 1 in March 1991, costing the company an arm and possibly two legs. Even less so, when Mr Parsons confessed that he’d had ‘an inkling’ that the record might be used in the ad campaign. A lesson learned.

Unexpectedly, my job at William Hill enabled me to begin using my journalistic skills once more when I was asked to edit the company’s staff newspaper Showboard. When I introduced a feature into the paper involving pop celebrities with an interest in horse racing and/or betting, it also enabled me to interview a few of the people whose records I had been collecting over the years. One of them I shared initials with, and Gordon Sumner, aka, of course, ‘Sting’, was someone whom, as he was roughly the same age as I am, I had watched and listened to with interest. I still own copies of all the Police albums and one or two of his solo albums – happily playing the former from time to time, but frequently taking evasive action to avoid going anywhere near the latter!

When I interviewed Sting he told me how he had stumbled into the world of racehorse ownership: ‘I had six Irish builders in my house and we got talking. “Sting,” they said, “what you need is a string of racehorses.” One of them owned a horse called Sweetcal, so he and I went into partnership. They hadn’t told me Sweetcal also pulled a proverbial milk-cart! She wasn’t very good…’ ‘I always back my horses,’ he told me. ‘It’s in good faith to do so. I always bet to win, but I don’t bet outside of racing.’ Nor was he ever likely to give up recording to become a jockey. ‘The first time I ever rode a horse was in Egypt, when we rode round the Pyramids on Arabian stallions – it was like riding a motorbike without handles, but an unforgettable experience.’

Let’s be fair to him, though. Whatever your opinion of Sting, surely you have to hand him an accolade for writing one of the great lyrics about teenage love. ‘Can’t Stand Losing You’, from the Outlandos d’Amour album, was released in 1978 and made a minor impression on the Top 50, but was re-released during 1979 and was a massive hit. For me and, I suspect, other collectors, the lines, ‘I see you’ve sent my letters back/And my LP records and they’re all scratched’ really sum up those early relationships in which I was forever sending records to girls to symbolise my love for them. I think it was a boy thing. I don’t recall (m)any such gifts coming in the other direction. But, faced with Sting’s situation, would I have been more miffed at losing the girl, or at the records being scratched? The latter, doubtless.

At that age it wasn’t financially easy to chalk it up to experience and just buy another copy or, indeed, to go out and find another girlfriend! This was the final blow for any fledgling relationship. Could you really love someone who could mistreat and abuse defenceless vinyl in this manner? Surely, had you gone the whole hog and married her such unreasonable behaviour would later be irrefutable grounds for divorce. Most of the records I sent, or gave to the girlfriend who ultimately became – and remains – my wife, did, though, get scratched, usually at parties, but at least she never sent them back.

Steve Harley enjoys a bet, too, but told me of the occasion when he totally forgot he’d backed a 28/1 winner. Steve was a great fan of the kidnapped racehorse, Shergar, and was very upset as he saw the great runaway Derby winner beaten into fourth place during the St Leger: ‘I’d had a couple of hundred pounds on Shergar long before the Leger, but on the day itself something told me to have a fiver each-way on outsider Cut Above. I watched the race, and was so sad for Shergar being beaten that I was sitting there feeling depressed for some time before I even found out that Cut Above had actually won the race, so I’d backed a 28/1 winner.’ Steve and I met again in slightly bizarre circumstances one night when I was acting as a steward for his show with Cockney Rebel at Wembley Arena. I was walking along in an area behind the stage with a friend as Steve was walking towards us. As he came up to us we stopped to say hello to him and my mate, Bill Nicholls, thrust his fist towards Steve and told him, ‘I’ve got nothing else to sign, so would you sign your name on my hand, please?’ Steve obliged.

A few years later I was tipped off that a well-known figure from the early punk days was working for William Hill. I investigated and discovered that I was indeed now a colleague of the wonderful Gaye Advert, bassist and focal point of punk band, The Adverts. Music writer Dave Thompson declared that Gaye, with her ‘panda-eye make-up and omnipresent leather jacket defined the face of female punkdom until well into the next decade’. I’d been a fan of the band’s breakthrough Top 20 single, ‘Gary Gilmore’s Eyes’, and was delighted to be able to interview her in one of the company’s London shops, finding her to be a modest, friendly person. She even signed my copy of their album, Crossing the Red Sea which came out in 1977 if you believe the record label, or 1978 if you believe its cover! Gaye, who reverted to her real surname of Black, is now a fine ceramic artist, exhibiting her work around the world.

Another way in which I was able to link my job and company to music appeared when the Mercury Music Prize – as it was originally known – was introduced in 1992. I approached the organisers and offered to help them promote the Prize by opening up a betting book on the outcome. They were happy to accept and William Hill enjoyed an exclusive relationship with them for several years. The Prize was won by Primal Scream in its inaugural year, followed by Suede and M People. This proved an admirable source of free music – albeit usually CDs rather than LPs – but beggars and choosers and all that! I also prompted the company to take bets on the Eurovision Song Contest, which went well enough until 2006 when Finland’s heavy rock entry, the band Lordi, brought the house down with their ‘Hard Rock Hallelujah’ only for our odds compilers to decide they still couldn’t win, and continue to offer Lordicrously long odds about that happening, until it did…

One of my final William Hill-related record incidents occurred on Grand National day, 2014. It was the ‘done thing’ for Head Office-based bods to lend a helping hand in a betting shop on this, the busiest day of the year. I volunteered to do so at a branch in Northwood Hills, Middlesex where, unbeknown to me, the manager was a real Beatle buff, from taste in music to his winklepicker boots and Beatle haircut. Top man and very well disposed to me when I arrived and asked him what role he’d like me to play in his shop.

‘Could you just welcome punters in and help out the ones who clearly aren’t quite sure what they should be doing?’ he asked.

No problem, we had a supply of sweets, keyrings, pens and such giveaways and I was well used to dealing with novice punters. The day went well and we had a steady stream of customers coming through. Then a middle-aged guy with a couple of heavy bags, one around his shoulder, the other in his hands, wandered in, looking a little unsure. The shop manager recognised him but didn’t know his name. We wondered what was in the bags. I engaged him in conversation and asked him. He was quite happy to show me – he had a stash of perhaps 30 or so LPs in the bags, and some of them were obviously of a type that most record shop patrons I knew would be very keen to get a look at and quite possibly pay significant sums to own.

‘What are you looking to do with them?’ I asked, hoping he might say, ‘Give them to you for a fiver the lot.’ Instead, he vaguely suggested he might look for a record shop where he could sell them. I told him that I knew a local guy he could definitely trust to offer him a fair price, and told him how to get to Julian’s Second Scene shop, before ringing him to forewarn him. Against my expectations, the chap did go to the shop, but ended up leaving Julian very frustrated as he agreed to sell several of his lesser lights but prevaricated about the really desirable ones – both Blossom Toes’ LPs and several others on a par in the rarity stakes. ‘I had to give up on him in the end,’ said Julian later. ‘He kept threatening to sell all of them to me, then argued with himself about whether he’d get more elsewhere. I know full well he wouldn’t have done, but I eventually had to tell him to make his mind up, or stop wasting mine and his own time. Perhaps I’ll eventually hear from, or see, him again… but I seriously doubt it.’

Neither of us has ever seen the man since.