Racing
Bad tips
Jeffrey Bernard
Impersonating God is a tricky business. Last week's tips were simply flushed away. sometimes think, when the game is reallY bad that is, that the easiest way out would be to get up in the morning and just shove a tenner in the loo and then pull the chain. Shelahnu ran fairly well but not well enough. which was the horse I backed at the last moment after having tipped you Laughing Girl, and No Defence was simply out of his class. Which all leaves me on the borders of bankruptcy and you probably wondering why on earth I bother to tip at all. What happened to The Pilgarlic is still a mysterY to me since I spent the afternoon at Windsor which is the only track I know where theY haven't got TV sets in the bars on which Yea can watch the other meetings. Back -tb the drawing board as they say and with some reflections on the business of tipping. I felt so confident about No Defence and The Pilgarlic that I was shouting their names all over the place. The race, as I saw it, Was bound to concern those two at the line, for that matter, Laughing Girl and Shelahne were the only two horses in the November Handicap. It's wisdom and contriteness after the events that concern me now, What fascinates is the way that people react td losing tips. Now it so happens that the horses I tipped in the Spectator came almost straight frore the horse's mouth. Inured as I am to Personal disaster, I have come to regard losing bets over the past few years as losses of bits of paper. I don't mean to sound flash by that, I just mean that I don't expect miracles but don't mind them when they come to Pass' On the other hand, when I do get what think is a genuine bit of information, thee I feel bound and obliged to pass it on. So it wasn't only the readership of the Spectator that got lumbered with The Prk garlic and Laughing Girl. Others were. affected too. One of them was a painter 0tit some repute. He is a fearless gambler and guess that he must have lost £1,000 on the two. I met him on Monday morning overt coffee and he uttered not a single word 0' reproach. Lovely and as it should h'c' Another that got my Saturday message was a girl who has been sneering at me ever since' Yet another was a man in my local wh,.°1 6,1r hasn't stopped moaning since Laughing practically died in the straight. What I 111 getting at is the fact that there are those wh;) mistakenly accept the hunch as gosPeli They're not Christians, just punters and. Wish to God that they'd get it right. A tip 15 an opinion. It might be a strong opinion--; one stated with some conviction—but It 5 still just an opinion and if all of them We l! bang on target then there wouldn't be suet'
things as horse races. Worse than tipping losers to bad losers is tipping winners to idiots and then not backing them yourself.
I was having a shave in a barber's shop in Old Compton Street on Monday morning and the man operating the cut-throat asked me what I fancied. For a moment I couldn't answer him since I'd noticed the most extraordinary thing. Instead of using tissue paper to wipe the razor on after every clean sweep of the chin, he was using betting slips nicked from the local betting shop. Having digested that, I went on to say that I thought Fred Winter's horse, Linsky, might oblige at a long price. Gastronomic and alcoholic events that followed prevented me from having a wager that afternoon. In the evening, when I read that Linsky had won at 12-1, I choked.
Sure enough, on Tuesday morning when I ventured into Soho again, they all wanted me to buy them a drink. Now I should have thought that it was they who should buy me a drink, but no. Their opinion is that I'm some sort of Wizard. I told them that I'm a flash in the pan, but they won't have it. You Just can't win. I actually feel rotten instead of Pleased that I won on Youth when it won the Washington International on Saturday. I Put a tenner on it two weeks ago, grabbed 7-2 and then thought it would lose. Reports kept coming through from the States that it Was pouring with rain and Youth doesn't supposedly like rain. Then he was said to have cut one of his legs and then done a lousy gallop. For a while they considered scratching him, but in the end they gave him his chance and he hacked up by ten lengths. Apparently he was only cantering until he turned into the straight. Anyway, he won and I picked up £35 from my friendly bookmaker. Why didn't you tip it in the Specta tor?: he asked me. Well tell you why. Sometimes, you get a hunch and at the same time feel that God might be slightly disPleased with you and you don't want to infect everyone else with the bad luck. Youth, the French Derby winner, was a case in point. He's now retired to stud, which is More than I can say for myself, having won seven of his nine races as a three-year-old.
Back to the bread and butter business, I sPent a rain-soaked Saturday afternoon at Windsor last week. I managed to back seven Consecutive losers, get wet inside and outside, but yet have a pleasurable day. That's What I like about racing. One can be encompassed by disaster and still have a good day. Robin Gray, Gainsborough of the Morning 4dvertiser, who does the racecourse commentary, took me up to his eyry on the grandstand roof and I watched him—and listened to him—do the commentary. It's really a very clever business. In the morning he draws, with crayons, the colours by the horse's names on the racecard, memorises them and then has to talk eighteen to the dozen as they charge around that odd figure°f-eight circuit. What a pity that such nice People run such a dump of a course. What I Mean is that it's a well-run gaff but, dear oh dear, it is a gaff. We were crying in the rain.
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