Low life
Unsporting
Jeffrey Bernard
TYork last week for the GimcrackStakes. British Rail took me there and they brought me back and they never cease to amaze me. If I was on the board of BIZ I'd keep rather quiet about it and yet there was Pru Leith of all people almost boasting about it in the Sunday Times Magazine the other day. She should be barred from her own restaurant for a spell and force-fed orl, BR sandwiches. The bookmakers caller, them hovercrafts — two pieces of bra' supported by hot air. For a kick-off they didn't carry any vodka and you don't Put out to sea without lifeboats. Secondly' American tourists, especially their Coca' cola-addicted children who jam the buffet car, should be jettisoned by the guard as soon as the train has reached maximum speed. I started the day's play with 3 `metric' can of John Smith's bitter; an opening gambit I haven't used for years,; Then, surrounded by Yankees, I switched my attack to Bacardi and ginger beer. By oncaster I had it sewn up and at York sta- tion was met by Alistair Down of the Porting Life who kindly drove me to the course where we set up shop, so to speak, in the Champagne Bar. It was while swigging our £10.50-per- bottle of Mercier — very good value com- Pared to anything on Southern racecourses that Alistair reminded me that apocryphal stories of the reason for my behaviour got the sack from the Life, plus my °ehaviour while on it, still linger on. He
hacks me he had asked two young newcomer Backs if they would like to meet the ex-
co lumnist, yours truly. `No,' they said, he's dangerous.' It may have had something to do with having been Colonel Mad on Private Eye, but in any event how Pathetic. I'm supposed to have screwed a secretary in the Life office in 1971 which is utter balls. All that happened was that I got speechlessly drunk when I was supposed to Take a speech at the annual National Hunt 'similar There had, of course, been other
letter episodes' as the editor said in his
letter of dismissal, but you wouldn't exactly call that 'dangerous'. Still, I was quite flat- tered and rather sorry that the two lads didn't extend it to mad and bad as well. (Thank you, Frederic Raphael, for Byron.) The shame of the day for me — and this is most unsporting of me — was that the Gimcrack winner, Horage, should have been trained by a pipsqueak called Matt McCormack. An ex-groom of Peter WalwYn's, the silly Matt approached me °Ile night in the Swan at Shefford, quite Purple in the face, and told me, 'You shouldn't take the piss out of racehorse trainers in the Eye.' Why not?' I asked `Because they're very important People,' he said. This just might be the silliest remark in the history of the Turf. But what did amuse me was the look on the face of Horage's owner, a Lebanese gent called Rachid. It was the horse's eighth win °n the trot and a very important one for those of you not into racing. Furthermore, Mr Rachid paid comparative peanuts for it. se now walks around looking quite dazed and as though he's been whacked over the head with a hammer. Surprising really when You consider that making money is the cot- tage industry of the Lebanon. One win I was pleased about was that of fat O'Nine Tails, who's owned by a very nice bloke called Essa Alkhalifa. He has an L°11 well but the pipeline is always filled with bubbly when I meet him. He's also a good he to meet on the dreaded British Rail as fie transfers you to first class. Another good
had at York was Steve Cauthen whom I nad a chat with. When I used to meet him in
nLambourn when he first came to ride here I thought there was something distinctly odd about him, eccentric almost, and I couldn't quite put my finger on it. Then it dawned c'n me one day. Christ, he's got good man- ners. This is a rare commodity on the Turf. Irma Kurtz says it's because he's American and she's probably right. I wish he'd teach them to the tourists.
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