The turf: Man with the Midas touch

Nobody communicates his pleasure in winning with a more all-embracing bonhomie than professional gambler Harry Findlay. Labrador puppies presented with a dog treat are a model of restraint by comparison. Even so, the degree of Harry’s enthusiasm as I presented him with the trophy earned by his Inler in the Barry Hills Biography Stakes at Doncaster on Saturday came as a surprise. It turned out that his joy in accepting the capacious ice bucket, the £7,546 he will share with the Sangster family and a free copy of Frankincense and More was just a little supplemented by learning that he held eight of the 14 winning tickets in that day’s Tote’s Scoop6, giving him a decent chance of picking up the £1 million rolling bonus this weekend.

Harry, it turned out, had already nearly finished the book, but there were copies, too, for trainer Brian Meehan and jockey Kieren Fallon, both delighted to see Inler, once a 2000 Guineas fancy, back to near his best. After Barry and I had completed a betting-hall signing session, my signature wavering occasionally at the daring décolletage of Doncaster’s female racing fans, somebody asked, ‘Why did you choose to write about Barrington W. Hills? Don’t they call him Mr Grumpy?’

Indeed, they do. Wife Penny has a cushion in their drawing room emblazoned with the slogan: ‘Sometimes I wake up grumpy and sometimes I let him sleep.’ But there is a great deal more to Barry Hills than the occasional gruffness that he has built in as a trademark.

He is the definition of the self-made man. The son of a head lad, he started off in stables himself on £25 a year plus clothing allowance. Working cannily with other travelling head lads while employed by John Oxley, he built up a betting pot over a period then went in big on Frankincense, a horse he was convinced would win the Lincoln Handicap in 1968, backing it through the winter from 66–1 down to 8–1.