Low life
Life history
Jeffrey Bernard
news I had last week. I'm going to start writing a column again for the Sporting Life after an absence of 12 years. It won't make me rich but it will be great fun. It seems that my passing out when I was guest speaker at the National Hunt dinner in 1971 has been forgiven. Incidentally, what was odd about that was that no one minded at all except for my boss and trainer, Bill Mar- shall, who always said to people, 'If you want a really good after dinner speaker get Jeff. He's not boring because he doesn't say anything.' But, as I say, the heavy heart within is weighty because of the memories of those days on the Life between Nijin- sky's narrow defeat in the Arc to Mill Reef's victory in the Arc exactly one year later. In fact, just as we were swilling cham- pagne after Mill Reef's victory it was none other than the champion trainer today, Henry Cecil, who told me I'd got the sack from the Sporting Life. He'd heard it on the grapevine.
But those 365-odd days were heady, great fun and eventually disastrous for me. To my astonishment the column took off like a rocket and became immensely popular. 1 wrote a lot about loss and I suppose the average reader could identify with that. There was a ghastly little picture of me at the top of the column so complete and utter strangers recognised me at the races. They'd send me over bottles of bubbly in the Members Bar and trainers who befriended me and showed me the ropes, like Bill Marshall and Eddie Reavey, poured whisky down me like I was a drain. Of course I loved it. To be famous on any circuit in this life is fun and we all want to be loved, don't we. Typical was Ireland. 1 went to see a trainer called Con Collins one morning and he was on the blower. A maid brought me a tray on which was a bottle of gin, a bottle of whisky and a bottle of brandy. She said, 'Mister Collins will be with you in five minutes. if you need any more to drink ring the bell.' Any more! That was just after the first lot had been out, about 9 a.m.
At Newbury one day I won a fair bit on the first race and then started laying favourites to bookmakers and won a little bundle. Risky but beautifully adrenalin- filled days. And the race trains I loved. The restaurant cars filled with bookmakers, spivs, villains, mug punters and scallywags of all kinds playing cards, telling amazing anecdotes about the Turf and drinking as though there was no tomorrow. In those days I think I'm right in saying that the only train in England to sell champagne was the race train to York. We drank the buffet dry by Doncaster. Well, of course, it couldn't last. The whisky was killing me and the bouts of pancreatitis became more fre- quent.
As I said, the end came at the National Hunt dinner at some dreadful hotel in Ken- sington. It was suggested that 1 be the guest speaker and they should have known better, I was extremely nervous never having spoken publicly before and I went to the Life offices at 6 a.m. to try and write something, couldn't and thought a jar in a Smithfield pub might get the typewriter go- ing. I was accompanied by one of life's and the Life's real eccentrics, a greyhound cor- respondent called Albert Bright. He used to come out with some very odd remarks and I remember him once saying, apropos of nothing, 'Yes Jeff, I had my first fuck when I was firewatching on the roof of the Greyhound Express during an air raid in 1941.' Anyway we got smashed in Smithfield and then continued in the Stab — the Daily Mirror pub — at opening time. Still no speech. From there I went to the Colony Room club and so it continued all day. I got to the hotel, fell alseep in the lob- by and was taken upstairs and put to bed by the waiters. Here endeth the first lesson.
The next morning I flew to Paris for the Arc de Triomphe and Henry told me I'd been fired. The fact that I could never behave like I did in that year ever again doesn't diminish the depression at the memory of it all. Even at the end the lily demanded gilding. The whisky nudged me into a nervous breakdown and I ended up in a nut house. When I came to, there was an Irish psychiatrist sitting on my bed. Peace and saved at last, I thought. Then he opened his mouth and said, 'What d'you think will win the 2.30?' You just can't win, can you.
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