Low life
Turfed out
Jeffrey Bernard
After 20 years of having a metal press-badge to take me racing I have just been told that the badge committee of the Racecourse Association has rejected my application for the 1990 badge. Our edi- tor's appeal was also turned down. The decision means that I can no longer go into the various unsaddling enclosures or meet jockeys and trainers outside weighing- rooms or use the press-rooms. And those are the places the best stories are at.
I am told that no less than 90 racing hacks have been struck off. Having to pay to get into the members' enclosure won't kill me but that is not the point. What is annoying is to be slung out by a bunch of SP (Starting Price) reporters who couldn't write their way out of a betting-shop. They didn't like it when my column in the Sporting Life caught on years ago and they didn't like it when I wrote 'Colonel Mad' for Private Eye. They turned up for free drinks, though, when my book, Talking Horses, was launched at Lingfield Park two 'I think it's Descartes, so it must be.' years ago. That day they named a race after me and the hacks probably resented that too. Somebody once described racing journalists as being would-be gentlemen with. no visible means of support, but in reality they are, with the exception of half a dozen, quite simply plain men with suburban, pebble-dashed mentalities. I go racing less than I used to but my loyalty to racing makes me deserving of a lousy metal badge.
It is worse for others, though. A friend of mine, an excellent racing writer, Martin
Trew, of the Racing Post and the Times,
has had his application turned down too. He goes to the races more than a hundred times a year and relies on the business for
his living and they haven't got room for him? People like Trew write about racing,
unlike the birdbrains on the committee
who simply tell tomorrow's readers that so and so won the 2.30 at 3-1. I thank God that I am capable of doing other things
than telling you that Hyperion won the Derby in 1933. But the majority of the simpletons in the press-room are unaware of the fact that there is more to life than seeing if one horse can go faster than another.
The world of racing has played a big part in my life. Friends are what it is about, not just horses, and it has been at times half of the double life I like to live. The late Major Peter Cazalet who trained at one time for the Queen Mother and who was a horren- dous snob once said that racing was too good for the working classes and that only he and the Royal family should be allowed to watch it. Had he said it was too good for the press-room I could have gone along With him.
Some time ago I had to withdraw my application for membership of the Turf Club because so many members objected to it and it would have embarrassed my proposer and seconder into resignation. I Was told that the objectors to my presence on the premises were mostly Home County Yuppies. That is the main trouble with racing. For every Fred Winter, Peter Wal- wYn, Charles St George and Victor Chand- ler you get 50 real pricks. Still, I suppose it is the same in the pub and club and anywhere. What a pity it is that you don't have to have a metal badge to get into an ale house. Three young men came into the Coach and Horses yesterday Morning and it took them no less than three minutes to make up their minds as to What they wanted to drink. Such people, along with yuppies and badge committees should be confined to a barbed-wire enclo- sure about the size of the county Rutland, that was. They used to say that all men Were equal on the Turf and under it. That May be only true of Ireland now and I want mY ashes to be scattered by the finishing Post at Phoenix Park. The losers have to pass it too.
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