Old-fashioned values

Bookmaking’s image has changed. Alongside the arrival of the betting exchanges, the evolution of the big names like Hills, Coral, Betfred and Ladbrokes into gaming operators rather than old-style bookmakers has seen the decline of the family firms where clients could be sure of the personal touch, total discretion and often half a point or so above the generally quoted odds. Most of the big firms have decided too that telephone betting is not for them, which is how I have (part accidentally) become — to Mrs Oakley’s surprise and potential alarm — a client of Fitzdares, a bespoke operation catering mostly for high-rollers and happy to be described as ‘the Annabel’s of bookmaking’.

I had an account with the Tote, which passed to Betfred when it purchased the nationwide pool-betting organisation promising a better service. That ‘better service’ included an abrupt declaration one morning when I called in with my mostly £5 and £10 wagers that it no longer accepted telephone bets. I then followed the shrewdest punter I know to Sunderlands, a Croydon-based family firm that had in 1998 acquired Laurie Wallis and in 1982 taken over T. Guntrip, whose 1882 foundation made it probably the oldest-established bookmakers in the country. Guntrips started by posting prices on trees in Hyde Park and sent the Derby results by pigeon.

Recently Sunderlands itself has been acquired by Fitzdares and with some old-fashioned companies on board Fitzdares seems to believe in some old-fashioned values too. Balthazar Fabricius, whose brainchild the company is, was brought up at Goodwood where father Rod was the longtime manager of the course for the Earl of March and his family. A coffee-time chat there with Balthazar and Simon Wallis, grandson of Laurie, offered welcome reminders of the bookmaking days when a gentleman’s word was his bond and personal service saw give and take on either side.