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    Racing Rogues: The Scams, Scandals and Gambles of Horse Racing in Wales
    Racing Rogues: The Scams, Scandals and Gambles of Horse Racing in Wales
    Racing Rogues: The Scams, Scandals and Gambles of Horse Racing in Wales
    Ebook153 pages1 hour

    Racing Rogues: The Scams, Scandals and Gambles of Horse Racing in Wales

    By Brian Lee

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    mso-latin-font-family:"Gill Sans MT";mso-latinext-font-family:"Gill Sans MT";
    language:en-US;mso-ansi-language:en-US">Horse racing may be famously known as the ‘sport of kings’ but, in the pursuit of prize money and getting one over the bookies, it also has attained a notoriety for some underhand, corrupt and downright illegal practices. Horse racing in Wales is not exempt from these dodgy dealings and on many occasions has led the way in it’s ingenuity to devise jaw-dropping cons and cunning deceptions. The Scandals and Gambles of Horse Racing in Wales includes stories both from racing ‘under rules’ but also from point-to-point, known as racing ‘between-the-flags’, as well as flapping.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherSt David's Press
    Release dateMar 24, 2017
    ISBN9781902719542
    Racing Rogues: The Scams, Scandals and Gambles of Horse Racing in Wales
    Author

    Brian Lee

    Brian Lee was born in Manchester. UK. On leaving school, a period in accountancy was followed by a teaching career in Primary Education. Several years of telling his own stories to his two, then young children, when on camping holidays, led to the development of his many story characters, especially, 'Bouncey the Elf' published under the name of Brian Leo Lee. Now retired, living in South Yorkshire. Author of a Sci-fi novella: 'Trimefirst' published under the name of Brian Leon Lee.

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      Book preview

      Racing Rogues - Brian Lee

      PREFACE

      The days when racecourse tipsters ‘graced’ our racecourses are long gone. But there will be some racegoers who will remember the likes of Ras Prince Monolulu, Gully Gully, Mike and The Captain – a smartly dressed man who was a regular at Chepstow Racecourse where he used to give out pencils and little notebooks as a way of drawing attention to himself.

      Gully Gully always sported a teacher’s mortar board and black gown and his cries of "Gully, Gully, Gully’’ would echo all around the course. His red sunburnt face could always be found at Chepstow, Newton Abbot and Devon & Exeter during the summer months.

      The most famous of these tipsters was, of course, Ras Prince Monolulu. He used to wear a headband of dyed ostrich feathers and one of the lines he used to come out with was:

      God made the bees

      the bees made the honey

      you have a bet and the

      bookie takes your money

      There were other sayings, but they wouldn’t bear repeating here.

      Mike’s favourite trick to gather a crowd around him would be to throw down on the ground a huge wad of fivers held together by an elastic band and invite race goers to help themselves! Oddly enough, they never did.

      A tipster of a different kind was the religious gentleman who would attend all the Chepstow race-meetings. With banner held high, he would stand for hour after hour by the numbers’ board extolling race goers to mend their ways and save their souls.

      However, unlike the Can I mark your card, guv? brigade, which used to hang around the car and coach parks, his advice came completely free of charge.

      But just like these racecourse tipsters, who were out to relieve the racing public of their hard-earned cash, many of the characters you will be meeting in the ensuing pages were out to do exactly the same.

      This book is dedicated to all those people, some now sadly no longer with us, who acted as my chauffeur, driving me to point-to-points and race-meetings all over the country.

      FOREWORD

      It’s a great privilege to have been asked to write the foreword to this book which details so much of the diverse history of horse racing in Wales. There is no-one more qualified to have written it than Brian Lee who has been the Western Mail ’s point-to-point correspondent for more than forty years and who is the author of more than twenty books.

      The first time I met Brian was in 1975 I had published a facsimile of Tom Rees’s Racing Reminiscences and he gave it some glorious reviews in a variety of journals and newspapers. As I got to know Brian better, I realised that if he hadn’t been impressed with the book he would have said so. Indeed, because of his forthright opinions he has offended and pleased people in equal measures. He’s been reported to the Jockey Club several times on the pretence of bringing hunt-racing in disrepute and on one occasion, some years ago, even getting himself banned from a point-to-point on the Welsh circuit because of his report of the day’s events. Not that this deterred him as he turned up anyway to face his critics.

      His Turf Talk column, which appears in the Western Mail every week, is the first thing I turn to on those mornings. He keeps Welsh racing alive with his punchy and informative stories and anyone remotely interested in horse racing in our part of the world will be familiar with it. It is the only one of its kind that deals with horse racing in Wales that is published in any journal.

      When he approached me some 20 years ago - I was involved with a publishing company at the time - asking me if I was interested in publishing a little booklet on Cardiff’s Ely Racecourse I readily agreed as I did later when he sent me a typescript for a book on Welsh steeplechase jockeys.

      Robert King

      As kindred spirits we also share a passion for local history- Brian is the author of many books about his birthplace, Cardiff - and he was instrumental in finding me a publisher for my own books about Neath. He has always been supportive and has written many column inches about my own activities as an owner and rider and for the past 25 years a starter at my local point-to-point meeting. And when in the mid-eighties, my daughter and I had a great deal of success with a racing pony called Cennen Gambler which won on licensed racecourses in England he even got us air-time.

      Brian has very kindly added some fascinating stories of the scandals, big gambles and the unusual and strange happenings that have occurred in racing albeit under the recognised rules or the unrecognised rules of the turf.

      Robert King

      ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

      Iwish to thank all those who have helped me with this book. There are far too many to mention – you know who you are – but special thanks must go to my publisher, Ashley Drake, for giving me the opportunity to write this book, Brian Radford for writing the Introduction, Robert King for writing the Foreword, Tony Woolway at Media Wales and Alun Sedgmore of www.sportingprints.biz

      Princess Anne talking to the author at the Golden Valley point-to-point in 2009, alongside her daughter Zara Phillips and the jockey Tom David

      INTRODUCTION

      BARRY BROGAN was a unique National Hunt jockey. When his controversial 15-year career ended in May 1977, he incredibly decided to put all his experiences in print as an autobiography, and invited me to write it for him.

      Barry was unbelievably brave, fearless, astoundingly generous, addicted to betting and booze, and enjoyed nothing more than sneaking off with a trainer’s wife or adult daughter—or both. He rode for the Queen Mother and drank for Ireland. He crashed cars in a haze as a hobby, competed in races after a pub-crawl, and gambled ferociously and badly. For ten seasons, he figured in the top five of Britain’s elite band of National Hunt jockeys, and talked freely of the sport being awash with fixed races, huge bribes, gambling jockeys and crooked bookmakers. As a gambler, he once turned over £250,000 in six months, and lost a colossal £600,000 by the time common sense kicked in.

      Barry lived with me and my family for three months while compiling his book, attending Gamblers’ Anonymous on Tuesdays, and Alcoholics Anonymous on Thursdays. We will never forget those funny nights when he’d come back after an AA meeting weighed down by lager cans in a plastic bag, which he’d bought at the off-licence as a gift for the work I was doing. And he never touched a drop. It was as though he also bought them to test his abstinence. Barry was the proverbial ‘likeable rogue’. Charming, inoffensive, polite, amusing, and never forgetting his bouquet of flowers every Friday for my wife as a ‘thank you’ for all the meals she cooked for him. Yet behind this smiling, plausible facade was a sharp, mischievous mind that set up all sorts of devious challenges that inevitably ended with a three-month spell in an open prison for stealing £2,000 from a bookmaker’s car and losing the lot on four races in a betting shop across the road. Barry delighted in telling me how he volunteered to clean the prison chapel—and arranged for his friends to visit and drop cigarettes in the waste bins, which he rapidly emptied when everyone had left.

      Brian Radford

      What must never be forgotten about Barry Brogan was his courage and skill as a jockey. He rode more than 400 winners, including illustrious victories at the Cheltenham Festival, Aintree, Ascot, and for royalty. Many times, he vanished overnight, boldly returning two to three weeks later claiming he’d been laid low by a serious stomach complaint, when in truth he’d been back in Ireland being dried out. But for these constant alcoholic interruptions, Brogan could well have been a champion. As it was, he was Northern champion five times. Before we sat down to write his book, he said to me… This shall be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. What he

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