Betting

Modern Toss was invented in 2004 as the label for a series of cartoons by Jon Link and Mick Bunnage. Many use foul language and some are very funny. Under the category of Work, a man says to a person sitting at a desk: ‘I think I’ll go home. I’m a bit bored.’ As often in satire, reality has imitated art. I assume the title Modern Toss coincides in meaning with an entry in the Oxford English Dictionary from 2007 giving an ‘additional sense’ for toss. An illustrative quotation came from Viz for 7 December 1990: ‘See this book Tom… Yes, I’ve read it actually. Yeah. Me n’all. Right load of toss, isn’t it. But at 16 quid a throw, he must be coining it in.’ The dictionary, in suggesting an etymology, invokes a letter from 1915 by Lytton Strachey quoted in P.N.

World politics is dire but so long as Mick Herron is writing spy novels, David Mitchell is raising laughs and Bukayo Saka is scoring goals there is joy available and I have lived to see the start of another proper jumps season at the Cheltenham Showcase meeting. Saturday’s racing did, however, provide a sharp reminder of how the Irish dominated last season’s Cheltenham Festival, winning 18 of the 27 races, including 12 of the 14 Grade One contests. Irish trainers Ian Patrick Donoghue, John McConnell, Gordon Elliott and Henry de Bromhead won four out of the seven races, and you have to wonder how hard some home-based handlers are trying when only one of the five runners in the William Hill novices hurdle came from an English yard.

Somebody up there doesn’t like me much at the moment. The bank insists that two cash machines which failed to deliver me £400 actually did and is charging me accordingly; Mrs Oakley’s entire cooking range has to be expensively renewed because no one will replace a cracked induction hob; and when our sewage pipe blocked the other evening I couldn’t contact the drain company because the village’s telecoms chose that hour to go offline. ‘Those who don’t change their minds get stuck in a rut. You have to be open-minded in this game’ So it continued at Newmarket last Saturday. On a visit to Ralph Beckett’s Kimpton Down yard three days before the Arc, which he won with Bluestocking, I had never seen so many beautifully bred horses bursting with health.

When things went wrong in his days running the Daily Mirror, the scoundrel Robert Maxwell used to shout: ‘Which effing idiot thought of doing that?’ Told once by a bolder-than-average subordinate that what proved to have been a disaster had been his own idea, he responded: ‘In that case what effing idiot let me do it?’ Thanks partly to generous layers who pay up to six places in Heritage handicaps, it has been a prosperous punting season for me but at Newbury last Saturday it was bookmakers 7 – Oakley nil and I have nobody to blame but myself. Every year I counsel myself to hold back as the autumn rains start changing the going and making a nonsense of form figures achieved on good to firm.

There is nothing like visiting a stud early in the foaling season. As amiable mums-to-be saunter up to the paddock rails, it both rekindles the basic passion — admiration for the magnificent animals that give us such pleasure contesting their prowess — and recharges the optimism sometimes sapped by racing’s structural problems. In Friday’s winter sunshine, at Alex and Olivia Frost’s Ladyswood Stud near Malmesbury, the Dubawi mare Empress Consort, once trained by Andre Fabré and now in foal to the mighty Frankel, nibbled my notebook while Malaya, formerly a classy hurdler with Paul Nicholls, arched her neck and nuzzled up to help Alex reach her favourite scratching spot.

Since coup conspirators nearly won £10 million from the bookies, the sport has divided into two camps. Some grinned and wished good luck to the schemers in their efforts to worst the Old Enemy; others insisted with sober faces that it was a scandal which besmirched racing and diddled honest punters who weren’t in the know. With most racing eyes firmly fixed on the Dublin Racing Festival on 7 February, bookmakers became aware overnight of potentially huge liabilities on three horses in obscure races, each saddled by a different trainer, who had been linked together at long prices in multiple trebles and doubles. Their panic grew as first Fire Away, trained by Laura Morgan, won the 1.25 Class 4 novice chase at Musselburgh by 19 lengths.

Doing good doesn’t always work out as expected. A regular entering his local pub takes pity on an old lady seemingly fishing with a bent stick and string in a kerbside pool of rain. He invites her in for a drink. As she raises her gin and Dubonnet, he asks amiably: ‘So how many did you catch today?’ ‘You’re the eighth,’ she replies. Imagine another pub scene. As lockdown is relaxed, a customer’s order of three pints of bitter and two G&Ts is refused by the landlord: ‘Sorry, Squire, but according to my government boozometer that takes you over your permitted weekly Alcoholic Spending Limit of £100. You signed for two rounds on Sunday.

Why hasn’t Bristol De Mai become as beloved by the racing public as his fellow greys Desert Orchid and One Man were? Probably because the jumping world has become obsessed with the Cheltenham Festival and the best Bristol De Mai has achieved there is a third place in the 2019 Gold Cup. For quite some time Bristol’s trainer, Nigel Twiston-Davies, has declared that his stable star has not been given the credit due to him and he has had good reason: after Bristol De Mai’s victory in Haydock Park’s Betfair Chase last weekend, there can be no doubt about his rightful place in the pantheon of top chasers. People like me who did not back him last Saturday at odds of 9-4 need their heads examining.

My French friend André speaks perfect English and is the kindest of men. After reading last week about my futile efforts to place a bet on the French state betting terminal in the village bar, he put himself out during the week to have a word with one of the bar staff. He gave her my description and told her to expect me to appear in the bar the following Sunday afternoon in time for the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe. And he drew an assurance from her that she would help me decipher the betting-form multiple-choice hieroglyphics. Or, better still, take a verbal betting instruction over the counter. I know next to nothing about horses other than that they are frightened of crisp packets and can deliver a terrific kick if you loiter behind them.

Encountering a generous-hearted bookmaker is normally as rare an occurrence as finding a picture of the Duchess of Sussex without her hand on the Markle pregnancy bump. All credit, then, to Coral and Betfair and one or two others for their behaviour last Saturday. After a thrillingly close finish to the EBF Matchbook VIP Novices’ handicap hurdle at Sandown Park, the topweight One For Rosie, ridden by Sam Twiston-Davies, was declared the winner over the public-address system. Since I had backed him at 12–1, a certain amount of undignified jumping up and down ensued over which my racing companion was remarkably forbearing.

The Scudamores are one of the bedrock families of jump racing. After being shot down and spending two years as a PoW, Geoffrey Scudamore trained racehorses in Herefordshire, including a Cheltenham Festival winner ridden by son Michael. Michael, one of the great horsemen of his day, won the 1957 Gold Cup on Linwell and the 1959 Grand National on Oxo. But in November 1966 a horse slipped up: a punctured lung, a broken jaw and cheekbone, a cracked skull and an eye injury forced him, too, to turn to training. Michael’s son Peter was initially nervous of approaching the wired-up Martian-like figure who emerged from hospital.

Racing is an expensive sport to stage. Courses and grandstands have to be maintained, health and safety regulations have to be observed. Human and horse ambulances have to be provided, turnstiles have to be manned and, to maintain the ‘integrity’ of a much gambled-on sport, stables have to be guarded, and photo-finish and race-patrol cameras have to be provided. Recognising this, as they sought to clean up gambling laws in the 1960s, our politicians introduced a rare example of ring-fenced taxation: they sanctioned a levy system on bookmakers to make them responsible for producing a significant contribution to racing’s costs. By 1978 the Gambling Commission was complaining that racing had become ‘addicted to subsidy’.

This is an extract from Robin Oakley's racing column in this week's Spectator. You can tell by the tone of the jokes how most occupations are regarded and we’ve all heard the traditional ones about the old enemy. ‘Why don’t sharks attack bookies?’ ‘Professional courtesy’. ‘Why did God invent bookmakers?’ ‘To make used-car salesmen look good.’ ‘Why are bookmakers buried an extra six feet down?’ ‘Because deep down they are very nice people.’ OK, such stories are applied to lawyers too. And journalists. But as a Racing Post headline confirmed last week, bookmakers are under heavy pressure. William Hill has been fined £6.