Racing
Tote talk
Jeffrey Bernard
Just back from a lunch at the Savoy. Posh, aren't I ? Well, not really. I was asked to it by the Tote. To give it its proper title, the Horserace Totalisator Board. They would like to do away with off-course bookmakers and they think that by doing so they'd plough a lot of loot back into racing.
0z)ine disagree. But to start at the beginning, It was a fascinating 12.30 for 1.00. The first People I met in reception were the guest sPeaker and his wife, Mr and Mrs Woodrow Wyatt. He said, 'Don't you write a column for the Spectator?' and I said, 'Yes, He then said, puffing like an outraged horse that had nearly fallen at the last and come in ,nfth, '1 print that paper.' Well, tutty, tutty. ' °My hope he didn't print the menu that they bunged us in the Abraham Lincoln Rooms at the Savoy. We started with—Le Pilaff de Fruits de Mer Thermidor—and. I really think it's high time that hotels said ush and chips when they meant it and not Sole avec les pommes de Terre frits, and _the" We chased that with Le Supreme de vIlaille a la Kiev avec Les Pommes Pailles et La Mousseline d'Epinards au Gratin. That was washed down by Les Cerises Noires Parfumees au Kirsch avec La Boule de Glace au Cassis. After that lot, having forgotten to take my insulin in the morning, Went into a diabetic coma, nearly missed Woodrow Wyatt's speech and was only just brought back from the brink of death by having Cointreau forced down my throat by hen semi-Maltese commis waiter. ' 'len to business. Mr Wyatt wants the Tote to takeover off-course shops as I've said and as the doyen of British racing said to me after, 'What a load of old cobblers.' Phil ftlullof Halifax, the ex-schoolmaster who Lcittrided Raceform and Timdbrin and who "ovvs more about racing than just about ahYone in the world, pointed out that the sh°Ps closed down by a Tote takeover
u Id be mostly the obscure.country ones.
he pointed out to me, 'is supported °Y punters and they should have the opporu, nit.Y to bet where and how they want to, It's Ludicrous for owners and breeders to expect punters to subsidise them.' The last sentence :SJUSt about the most sensible thing I've heard v,n an age about the problems of racing. rr ears ago, and I think I've quoted the ernark before in this column, Phil Bull, a !II. an totally dedicated to racing, described '1.1e,entire lark as being, 'The great triviality.' r e.s got his values right. He knows that Lacing's entertainment, or, at least, should r, and he realises that most important of all _,the Punter. The idiot in the betting shop 70 doesn't know one end of a horse from the other is the man who, in the end, pays for everything. Mr Wyatt, though, has other ideas. He really and actually thinks that an off-course state betting monopoly operated by the Tote would work. It wouldn't. lilt would, it shouldn't. There is no earthly reason why owners should be subsidised by a tax on the mug who backs the wretched animal. Now I know that there are some people who believe in God, but, to exaggerate slightly, I prefer in racing matters to believe in Phil Bull. If he says it's balls then it is. The thing that made me sit up in the middle of the lunch and suddenly desert my Pinot Chardonnay was Mr Wyatt's slightly oldhat news that Mr Neville Berry was now representing the Tote on the rails. He said that Mr Berry was doing well. Do you know of anyone who isn't doing well at this lark except for you and me ? When it comes down to it, and I don't give a damn in the end about the good of racing and financial aid to racing since racing will always survive on the level it deserves to again in the end, then all the talk from Wyatt and Healey is hot air. People, raccgoers, punters, the bloody public and everybody just simply like the idea of bookmakers. If they went, it would be like poets deserting the world of love and if that doesn't get me in Pseud's Corner, nothing will. Now to Cheltenham. There are those in Ireland, believe it or not, who fancy the English for a change since they think our hold-ups due to bad weather will leave our horses fresher and therefore fitter than theirs, I don't go along with that. The going surely, at the time of writing anyway, isn't going to be anything but soft and Irish horses, as a rule, revel in the soft. That good firm Victor Chandler offer 7-2 Fort Devon for the Gold Cup, 10-1, and this I really fancy, Debonair Duke for the Daily Express Triumph Hurdle and 10-1 Beacon Light for the Champion I-Iurdle. The Triumph fancy, Debonair Duke, is really fancied.
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