Jolly bad show

Here’s a salutary punting tale about betting the jollies in time for this year's Cheltenham Festival which starts tomorrow.

It comes care of Odds and Sods, the autobiography of Ron Pollard who was PR director at Ladbrokes in the 1970s and 80s having started his career as a clerk at William Hill after the Second World War.

The tale involves the 1962 Festival, two Irish doctors, and an innocuous-sounding bet they struck which ended up costing them extremely dear. 

In that year, there were 18 races and the bet (once popular, now defunct) went like this. In essence the plan was to win £10 care of the favourite, in this case with the punt stipulated to take place over the duration of the entire meeting. 

If the gamble came off with a favourite winning, that was it and happy days; retire to the bar and strike a new bet. If it lost, however, the stake on the second (and subsequent races until a favourite won) increased in order not only to win a tenner, but to make up the losses from preceding punts. 

As Pollard pointed out “… in the case of our two doctors, they always knew the most they could win, but never what they could lose…”. You can guess how this is going to turn out.

On day one, the first favourite of the meeting was called Trelawny and was priced up at 9/4. So, the two doctors’ initial liability was £4.44 (converting from old money) to win their tenner. Only Trelawny didn’t win. The second race featured a 1-2 shot, Scottish Memories, which required the pair to stake £28.88 to win back the £4.44 and also to win a tenner.

Needless to say, that hotpot got turned over as well. On and on this tale of misery continues, through days one and two of the Festival with no market-leader winning until we come to the very last race of the meeting. 

By this stage, the rules of the bet meant that the doctors needed to stake £5,225.15 if Pegle, the 9/4 favourite, was going to get them out of a punting black hole and win them a tenner.

Guess what? Pegle lost, which meant the overall deficit was a sum just shy of £17,000, an eye-watering sum for 1962 and the equivalent in today’s money adjusted for inflation of about £350,000.

For the record, eight favourites won at least year's Festival. Be lucky!