The turf: A good read

Racing brings in all sorts. Former Archbishop of Canterbury Robert Runcie came by the family route. He used to help his blind father write out his bets every Saturday and the family would be shushed into silence as the racing results were read out on the radio. One Saturday the results were delayed for a broadcast address by the then Archbishop. ‘Turn him off, unctuous old bugger,’ said Runcie’s father, clearly having no clue what direction his son’s career would take.

My father didn’t bet and nobody took me racing, but I was hooked early too. We lived  next to the long-defunct Hurst Park racecourse near Hampton Court. I used to prop my bicycle against the fence, stand on the saddle and peer over the wall to watch the fields thunder past, the whip-cracking jockeys in their vivid silks shouting for room. The thrill I got from the sheer colour, pace and buzz of the scene endures to this day, but it was when I went around to the racecourse entrance that I discovered gambling, the salt in racing’s soup. Then it was typified by ‘Prince Monolulu’, a huge black man with an incongruous feathered headdress, throatily shouting ‘I gotta horse’ as he sought to sell his tips to punters. In fact, Peter Carl Mackay wasn’t any kind of prince, although it didn’t stop him from walking unchallenged among the royals at King George VI’s funeral.

What I didn’t know until I read John Samuels’s Down the Bookies, a history of the first 50 years of betting shops (Racing Post, £18.99), was that The Spectator’s own beloved Jeffrey Bernard claimed to have killed Monolulu. When the old tipster was in hospital Jeffrey took him a box of Black Magic chocolates.