BABY-FACED ASSASSIN
MY BUSINESS hardly changed after I left university. I rented the first flat that I viewed in Cambridge while most of my friends left town, many of them to work in the City. When I went down to London for a night out and to catch up with them, I couldn’t believe how early they had to be up each morning. Many of them started work at 6.30 or 7.00 after a long commute and then toiled away well into the evening. I had to work hard, too, but I didn’t have to get up before dawn. To all intents and purposes I was basically pursuing my hobby and could go racing as often as I liked.
The supply of premium-rate telephone services quickly expanded as many other tipsters jumped on the bandwagon. Eventually the market became saturated with allegedly shrewd professionals, as opposed to the handful of celebrity tipsters who had started the ball rolling a few years earlier. I would have backed my service against any of them, but inevitably the sheer volume of opposition in the market affected the business, not least because the number of opportunists produced a rather downmarket image of premium-rate tipsters.
A problem occurred when one tipster, Henry Ponsonby, launched a service called ‘Best of the Rest’ that was passing on the selections of other tipsters. The Sporting Life accepted his adverts, but other advertisers were most unhappy at the development. There were many complaints, but very little was done to sort it out. I suspected that Ponsonby, very much ‘one of the boys’ in my view, was being looked after by his friends at the paper.
I may have been the youngest person in the business by a mile but I wasn’t standing for it. When I first contacted the Life, they failed to listen to my concerns, so I faxed them cancelling my daily adverts until further notice. The drastic action worked – within a few days the adverts for ‘Best of the Rest’ were stopped. However, the letter I received from editor Monty Court left me fuming. It ended: “I hope that is the end of the matter, because I have no wish to involve myself further in the hard-nosed business of selling tips.” I was most unhappy about the letter, as it was his paper that allowed the problem to escalate in the first place. I gradually moved nearly all my business to the Racing Post, a paper I much preferred anyway.
My image remained intact within the industry, and I was regularly in demand for newspaper articles and the occasional TV appearance. I was profiled in the Saturday and Sunday Telegraph as well as in some of the tabloids, including the Sun, whose racing correspondent Claude Duval was keen for a quote for his headline to the effect that I’d take the bookmakers for a million pounds over my career. That turned out to be a somewhat unambitious target. I drew the line at the News of the World, though, and declined an interview, only to receive a call from a friend one Sunday morning to report that they’d printed a double-page spread about me anyway. They named me ‘the baby-faced assassin of the betting ring’; my friends took the opportunity to call me ‘BF’ for some time afterwards.
At around the same time, the BBC launched ‘Esther’ in the style of an English version of ‘Oprah’ and I was asked to appear on a programme about gambling. When I arrived, there were quite a few familiar racing figures in the studio, including John McCririck along with on- and off-course bookmakers. I’d been told we would all be in the audience, but the researcher soon told me that I was one of three people up on the stage and that Esther Rantzen was starting the programme with me. Beside me on the stage were the mother and wife of addicted gamblers, which left me concerned that I had been set up for a rough ride. Perhaps I fooled them with my ‘nice young man routine’, but the show worked fine as it largely split into separate sections about good and bad gamblers.
The only worrying part was when one of the invited audience waved his finger wildly and informed me that all gambling was evil according to the Koran. He followed up with a warning about the inevitability of it all crashing down in a sea of addiction, which bore a remarkable similarity to the lecture given to me by my tutor at Cambridge. At least Esther did her best to fight my corner.
However, when ITV approached me, I was less impressed. They wanted to profile me and I was asked if I watched morning gallops at Newmarket. I didn’t, but they liked the idea of filming me watching the gallops through my binoculars, so they insisted on having that image anyway. That should have sounded a warning note. In the interview, they asked for a bet for that day and I replied: “Actually I’m not having a bet at all today, I think it’s much too difficult, but if you absolutely forced me to put my head on the block then…” When it was shown, this was edited to “put my head on the block…” and the entire piece was based around their footage from Newmarket and the fact that my ‘head on the block’ selection had been beaten. The whole episode reinforced my view that you shouldn’t believe everything you see or read in the media.
An important development in my business came when Supercall was bought out by Ladbrokes. This wasn’t exactly the image I was looking for, as the last thing I wanted was for potential clients to believe that I had a connection with the racing department at Ladbrokes. The situation was far from ideal and I wasn’t happy with the new management that were handling my account. It was time to move on.
Out of the blue, I received a call from Nigel Stewart, who co-owned a tipping service called the Winning Line that had exploited a niche in the market. The Winning Line charged a large yearly subscription for their service and wanted to sign me up because Nigel’s partner and chief tipster Stephen Winstanley needed a heart transplant. Winstanley had been very taken with my advice for the filly Mysilv at double-figure odds before Christmas for that year’s Triumph Hurdle in March, a race she duly won. On my racing line, in the weeks before the race, I had repeatedly taunted the bookmakers about their impending losses on the filly. I was unhappy with my situation at Supercall/Ladbrokes and needed little persuasion to agree a deal. We settled on a fee of £100,000 plus bonus for the first year.
Every horse selected for the Winning Line shortened instantly in the betting, rather like they do for the Post’s Pricewise column these days. In those days there wasn’t a proper market on most races until the afternoon, so that the odds taken were badly affected. Still, the selections I provided in that year still showed a healthy profit, which counted towards an additional bonus. Nevertheless, I found it a very trying time. Stewart and Winstanley were keen to have a high number of selections, so a lot of the horses advised were from other tipsters on their books. Crucially, customers didn’t know which selections were mine.
The Lobilio affair, in February 1995, was particularly difficult. During the winter, the service had a very good run, to the point where there was a stampede every time a selection was given out. In the previous fortnight, we’d received two separate tip-offs about foul play from sources in the betting industry, rumours that dopers were at work administering banned substances to horses to prevent them winning. On the way to the start of a handicap hurdle at Hereford, one of our selections, Lobilio, dropped dead.
This led to a media frenzy, with all the papers wanting to discuss what had happened. I even ended up on BBC News. It was annoying that in some sections of the media any suggestions of doping were dismissed as ridiculous. Doping horses to prevent them winning had been proved in the early 1990s, but it was apparently inconceivable when it came to the most heavily gambled horses of 1995, which were often Winning Line selections. Doping was again discovered in 1998, but I can’t recall anyone writing a retraction.
The jump season ended well when Master Oats, who we’d tipped ante-post for the Cheltenham Gold Cup at 16-1, won the race as hot favourite, but I found the following summer very tiring. I had to deal with endless amounts of controversy created by the huge effect that our selections had on the betting market. In the circumstances I couldn’t continue in such a position for much longer but, rather than quit in a blaze of publicity and further controversy, I eased my way out quietly. I did a results-based deal for the following year that allowed me to advise no horses at all if I chose. When it became clear how literally I was taking this over the next few months, we agreed to terminate the contract.
The move led to an arrangement with Michael Tabor, one of the largest and most renowned punters in modern times. Tabor, a West Ham fan who was brought up in the East End, began his working life as a trainee hairdresser but swiftly found that line of work didn’t provide enough excitement for him. He started out as a bookmaker by buying two betting shops cheaply, and quickly set about extending his betting empire under the banner of Arthur Prince. He played both gamekeeper and poacher, betting to big stakes and remaining a familiar figure in the ring at places like Royal Ascot, York, Goodwood and Cheltenham.
This heady mix of business and pleasure came to an end in 1995 when he cashed in his chain of 114 Arthur Prince betting shops for a sum said to have been £28 million. He had owned racehorses for many years and had enjoyed the biggest success of his life that spring when his Thunder Gulch won the Kentucky Derby. That £28m was invested wisely, as he joined forces with John Magnier and Aidan O’Brien in Ireland and became one of the leading owners in the world. Horses such as High Chaparral, Montjeu, Rags To Riches and Hurricane Run have won no end of major races in his famous orange and blue colours, as have many great names in which he has a share with his Ballydoyle cohorts, and he continues to pursue his hobby with great vigour.
Michael rang my home in Cambridge, but at the time I was still involved in the Winning Line so, despite an interesting chat, I was unable to commit at that stage. He is a fiery individual who knows exactly what he wants and does not hesitate to go after it, so after I left the Winning Line we made contact again and discussed coming to an agreement for Michael to receive my selections, finalising the deal over dinner at the Lygon Arms at Broadway during a Cheltenham meeting.
Michael was willing to match my salary from the Winning Line of £100,000 a year for a full year. Instead, I opted to settle for an arrangement based solely on Flat turf racing, which allowed me to take a long break during the winter to recharge my batteries, a routine I maintain to this day. I’d been equally profitable on the Flat and over jumps, but felt that I could do better still if I focused on just one code. Michael wanted me to select horses exclusively for him. It was strictly a business arrangement – we hardly ever met. He would ring me in the morning to see what I fancied, and in any one week I would probably give him four or five selections. I needed to place my own bets carefully to avoid affecting the price that Michael took, as although I was betting in fair amounts, up to around £5,000 a time, he was a much bigger player.
Such was Michael’s reputation that he was only able to place substantial bets in the afternoon, so we agreed to ignore early prices. His only difficulty was in placing his full stake on longer-priced horses, but I didn’t pick as many of those at the time as I would in later years and it wasn’t too much of a problem. Our association lasted about three years, and drew to a close only when my sudden move from Cambridge made it impossible to continue. Looking back at my figures he had no cause for complaint, as the bets I recommended to him showed a profit of 30 per cent. At the time there were still some big on-course layers and Michael, who received information from plenty of other sources as well, was able to ensure they were well accommodated.
I vividly recall some of the horses I recommended during those three years. I was particularly confident about the chances of Tregaron before he landed the White Rose Handicap at Ascot in May 1996. Word soon reached me that the biggest rails operator at the time, Stephen Little, had laid Michael a bet of £40,000 at 11-2, a wager that won him £220,000. Allowing for other outlets, his total winnings on the race must have been very impressive.
Three weeks later, I remember a trip to Bath to back For Old Times Sake in a two-year-old race. This time it was I who crossed swords at the track with Little. Little is a vicar’s son and I’m told he was so keen on racing as a youngster that he cycled to every course in Britain. Later, of course, he travelled in much greater comfort as he made his name. My wager of £12,000 on For Old Times Sake at 15-8 was at the time my biggest individual bet with a single bookmaker, and I doubt if my agents have managed many bigger since. What amused me more than the result, which certainly put a smile on my face, was that I left straight after the race, the third on the card, only to see Little’s enormous car – I think it was a Rolls – gliding out of the car park at the same time. Presumably he’d lost his appetite for any more business that day. Fair play to him – you’d struggle to find a course bookmaker to lay anyone a bet like that on a Saturday nowadays, never mind to a professional punter at a quiet midweek meeting at Bath.
Blue Goblin, in a six-furlong handicap at Newmarket in May 1997, was my biggest bet before leaving Cambridge. He was the only horse I ever told Michael was a certainty and I had £20,000 on him myself. He was 5-2 in early trading before crashing all the way down to 11-10, a move that must have taken colossal sums in the days when the market was exceedingly strong on a Saturday.
One race I remember with an unusually cold clarity from around that time was the 1995 Breeders’ Cup Classic, at Belmont Park in New York. I rarely bet abroad but, having seen Halling destroy his field in the International Stakes at York, I thought he had great prospects of taking the big prize. He had to overcome the American wonder-horse Cigar, but there were one or two doubts about Cigar’s recent form and I thought Halling could do it. The added attraction was the prospect of obtaining huge ante-post odds about Halling in Las Vegas. One or two punters had done this in previous years, and while they hadn’t always collected they had hoovered up some fancy prices. I flew to Sin City for 36 hours with one of my agents and we set about scouring the place for suitable odds. Halling was as big as 25-1 in places and we took everything from 5-1 upwards.
The Vegas casinos are not as brave as you might expect when it comes to advance betting, so we had to travel right across town to unearth every opportunity, spending most of that day and a half hopping in and out of the limousine we’d booked. The very size of the casinos meant that each visit could take up to half an hour, first finding the race-book area, then searching for odds, placing bets if available and finding our way out again. Most casinos allowed you to place another bet once they had adjusted the odds, so in a couple of places we bet four times as the odds tumbled from 25-1 to 12-1 to 8-1 and then 5-1. The cashier would yell ‘He’s hitting it again’ each time to call the supervisor over. By the time we were back on the aeroplane I’d placed just short of 30 bets totalling about £10,000, and stood to win more than £100,000.
On the day, Halling started 5-2 second-favourite with the UK bookmakers, so we’d beaten the market, but he ran no race at all and finished tailed-off last behind Cigar the wonder-horse. I travelled with my girlfriend Victoria to New York for the race, but it was a long journey home – even more so when the limo broke down on the way back to our hotel. We had set off from Manhattan with such high hopes in the morning, and ended a miserable afternoon getting increasingly cold on the side of the road waiting impatiently for two hours before our limo was repaired.