Sporting chance
Benny Green
Few items of news this year have heartened, me more than the recent announcement by the Advisory Centre for Education that there survives among our schoolchildren a percentage of congenital punters. Just at the point where I was beginning to get reconciled to the depressing idea that all manifestations of individuality have been flattened by the steamroller of cowardly conformity, I come across the following ex hilarating conversation, apparently not altogether untypical, with an eleven-year-old: Q. How do you spend your 20p a week?
A. On betting, the Sporting Life, and sweets.
Q. What would you do with a 50p bonus?
A. Put 20p on Vanity Girl to win, 10p on Darcon to win, and get three copies of the Sporting Life.
Now before the puritans start howling with dismay at the thought of all the young people of the country playing the horses instead of playing the game, let me point out the several creditable features of those eleven-year-old responses. First, you will notice the desire to compete rather than to be a mere spectator-consumer, symbolised by the precedence of betting over reading about it or eating while reading about it. Second, see the rampant courage of a lad who scorns the mealy-mouthed insurance of an each-way cover and the pretentious fol-de-rol of a place double, preferring instead the all-or-nothing win wager typified in our history by men like Nelson, Drake, Kitchener and Horatio Bottomley. Finally, where is the professional journalist whose heart will not rise Up in joy at the thought •that there is growing up a generation of young people who actually have a desire to purchase three copies of the same newspaper?
As to the lasting deleterious effects of backing horses on the Juvenile mind, I think I can say that the dangers have been ludicrously exaggerated by the unworldly. My own childhood was so saturated with the Punting mentality that relatives Unable to work out two plus two, could tell you within a fraction of a second how much you would have to come back on a two shilling each-way cross-treble with a five-to-four winner, a dead-heat second at nine-to-two, and a non-runner: The extent to which the gambling mentality overcomes all other emotions, even those of family pride and human compassion, is illustrated by the following microscopic extract from my autobiography. Before the last war, when I was still in single figures, my favourite uncle was a street bookmaker of considerable local renown who had been featured twice in the popular newspaper feature of the period, 'Courts Day By Day.' It so happened that my route home from school went directly past his pitch, through a crowded slum which sociologists have since agreed must have been the very first point on the eartil:s surface where the world population programme reared its ugly heads. It so happened that one of these ugly heads belonged to a gingerhaired youth of thirteen who was reputed by his contemporaries to eat tintacks for breakfast and crack walnuts by balancing them on his skull and charging at the nearest buck wall. At a rough estimate, I would say that, when the untoward incident occurred, 'he was four years older and three stones heavier than I. What he did was to stand on the pavement and bar my passage, announcing that anyone who wished to pass would have to knock him down first.
Within seconds several hundred small boys had formed a ring round us in the expectancy of witnessing my ritual sacrifice, and the sole reason I was not seriously worried was the knowledge that not fifty yards away my sporting uncle was keeping his vigil, would be sure to see what was happening, and to come to the rescue. I calculated that if I could hold out for the first few moves of the contest, I stood a reasonable chance of living to a ripe old age. And so the ordeal began, with me backing steadily away and keeping my left arm extended as far in front of my face as possible. Sure enough, just as I was beginning to feel tired, out of the corner of my eye I spotted the beaming face of my uncle peering down at me over the backs of the spectators' heads. It was one of the great watersheds of my life when I heard his voice calling out to the street in general, "Who'll give me seven-to-four the little 'un? "
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