The good old days

I’ve been throwing out old racing magazines, but ripping out interesting article before heading off to recycling.

This one from 2000 headed “Hacks and writers I have known” by Claude Duval (The Punter’s Pal) had a few interesting pen picture and quotes from horse racing hacks.

In his early days Duval arrived in the press room at Newmarket and put his gear down on a table in the corner.
John Rickman came in next, and said in a perfectly friendly fashion.
“Do you mind moving, old man.  I have been sitting in that sport or 37 years.”

Most racecourses provided free drink to the journos.  One got terribly drunk.
After Sir Noel Murless won a race we all gathered round the great man when the reporter in question suddenly grabbed hold of Murless’ coat lapels on realising he was about to pass out there and then.

Peter O’Sullivan was terribly shy and modest.  One day at Haydock, just before a 30 runner race, we were chatting when the course announcer said that one of the horses was a non-runner.
“Blast it”, he exclaimed.  “That was the only one whose colours I knew.”

Another journo was sprawled across the floor under a table.  I innocently assumed he was searching for his pen.  I then spotted the Press Association’s northern correspondent in a similar predicament.
The sight of an empty gin bottle told me how these two wordsmiths came to be lying low.  Remarkably within an hour he had dusted himself down and written some 1,300 words which were duly dispatched.

John Oaksey
In the nice-guy stakes, John would habitually carry 12st – and would win every time.

Richard Baerlein:  In 1981 he announced “Now is the time to bet like men”.  He had just seen Shergar win the Derby trial at Sandown.  He also napped the obscure Morston at 4-0/1 before the colt won in 1973.
The great storm of 1987 brought Baerlein to his knees.  At Newmarket on Dewhurst day I was startled to see him in tears.
“The storm caused a big oak tree to fall on top of my garage,” he explained.  “It went through the roof and flattened six chest-freezers full of wild ducks, crabs and lobsters.”

Peter Scott (Hotspur on The Telegraph):
He had the rather strange habit of greeting everybody with the words “Hello, fairly honest sportsman.”
“Oh, how very interesting, do you really think so?” he would say when he thought you were talking rubbish.
He adored flat racing.  As we travelled back from the Grand National on the train in my early days, he would order a bottle of Medoc as we cleared Runcorn Bridge and beam: “Thank God that bloody dog race is over for another year.”
He loathed US racing.  Asked why he would not report on the annual Breeders’ Cup meeting, he would observe: “I don’t attend junkies’ jamborees.”

Jim Stanford (The Daily Mail):
I once heard a hotel cocktail bar flunkey ask him: “Ice and lemon, sir?”  “Only if there’s ****g room,” was Stanford’s curt reply.
One afternoon, on his final visit to Doncaster, he seemed to be having trouble dialling the Daily Mail copytakers.
I asked him to call out the number so that I could dial it for him.  At the ringing tone I handed the phone to him – only for him to quickly and forcefully slam the receiver down again.
He looked at me and glared: “You’ve phoned the ****g wife.”