IN recent years, one of the most entertaining guests on the Luck On Sunday show was British on-course bookmaker Gary Wiltshire.

With bookmaking getting lot of bad publicity this week, it’s a good time to dive into the tales for Fifty Years in the Betting Jungle, a book Wiltshire has co-written with Paul Jones.

Nicknamed ‘the Belly from the Telly’, Wiltshire was the BBC betting advisor when they covered racing in the 1990s and fitted the role perfectly as he grew up on that side of the racing tracks - “Ever since I can remember, I always wanted to become a bookie,” he begins.

He became most well-known for almost losing his livelihood, owing £1.4 million, as the Frankie Dettori Magnificent Seven came to a climax back in September 1996 and his first book, Winning It Back telling that tale was published 14 years ago.

Fifty Years in the Betting Jungle, a series of tales told in his voice from his life and times and various escapades, intends to “bring back to life the characters, smells and give a sense of what the betting jungle used to be.”

It’s a rollercoaster life of 50 years since he was granted a bookmakers’ licence with numerous betting tales. The tales are from a very different era, but all the more amusing for that.

In the early 70s, when Wilshire was a kennel hand, and he remembers “there were 16 dog tracks in the Greater London area, sadly now only Romford remains.”

Paul Jones describes putting the book together as “15 chapters of tale after tale broken down into a series of five or six betting-related stories. It truly was a case of what do we leave out rather than what do we put in!”

Characters

The book goes from Wiltshire’s early days, getting caned at school for taking bets, to the early 70s at dog tracks around London, a few escapades – (why did the inside draws often win in a greyhound hurdle race at Oxford?!).

The betting-ring tales go from “the racecourse, greyhound tracks, point-to-points, flapping tracks, big sports arenas” and there are characters and tales aplenty. There are tales of backing Norton’s Coin at 200/1 to win the Gold Cup, it was planned in good faith, not by chance.

In wanting a set of colours like the old Jim Joel, “black, scarlet cap”, Wiltshire remarks that when Joel won the National in 1987 with Maori Venture, 32 of the 40 runners were double figure ages, the winner being 11. Now they want to ban those of his age!

Cheltenham ancedotes begin with, “when bookies walk through the gates, they suddenly grow a pair of bollocks…”

Ruby Walsh gets three different mentions at Cheltenham of “falling at the last hurdle when about to win”.

The tales continue around most of the British tracks, from Royal Ascot to looking to claim a horse for £6,000 at Nottingham, losing out by the draw of a ball from a bag to the only other interested party….for a mare who became a top class jumper, Mysilv.

Imagine the scene with a Ginger McCain ‘going beserk’ to Jeremy Clarkson at the old Towcester track?

If you like racing, or indeed any sporting tales from the 70s, 80s and 90s, you’ll enjoy this. It might not all be PC, but all the better for that. It’s all in a good humoured, easy read style.

It ends looking back again at the events of Ascot 1996, and how it all played out “after losing £1.4 million with £2,000 in my back pocket, I eventually paid it all back, even if it took me four years.”

You can sense the joy still in the description: “There’s no place like the betting ring on a busy afternoon in its heyday, feeling that electricity and looking into the whites of each others’ eyes when taking a bet rather than the faceless keyboard players of today.”

The book is available via the Weatherbys Shop website priced €23.95: