I used to like Jimmy Davies who bet as Reg Blandford before Martin took over.  He always had a huge cigar on the go.  If he was priced up but the punters were hanging back he used to announce "If you aint going to bet, I'll have a smoke" and he duly wiped his board and turned his back on the public and lit up his huge cigar.  Some of it was quite theatrical at times, good fun.

worst thread ever

Factmachine, no chablais for Maxine that night

mo puttnam bet as jack ray on aways tatts in the south

great showman on the stool

When I see the name John Joyce I remember an incident that happened to me in 1976, I was an apprentice panel beater aged 18 earning £10.80 a week and I had opened a race course account with him.

The accounts where always done up to a Thursday night and a bill from York Road Hartlepool would arrive on a Saturday Morning, after a couple of weeks my mother phoned me at work to say there was a letter for me from Hartlepool and I said I’d opened this account with a bookmaker and it would be his account and told her to open it, the bill should only have been for a few pounds but it was three bets of £200 pound each all losers so -£600 pound, she hit the roof and I can’t put on here what she said, I rang Hartlepool to see what had gone wrong and it turned out they had me mixed up with another account  of the same name, up to a couple of years ago I used to see the guy at York Races he is sadly no longer with us but he owned an abattoir in the Sheffield area, I used to chuckle every time I saw him, I think he was a friend of Ribero1.

Just got back from Cheltenham, sadly there is not many great bookmakers left their today.

that would be harry cooper ronnie,he had a good innings,turned 90 when he died and still having plenty on right up to the end.

Did he take his trilby off ? 

no one mentioned a bit of a character from the north in the joyce/steele era-peter rawson bet as john rawson,anyone remember what sign he had on his joint?

"tis is a no swearing area",correct carpet.

i remember telling him to p##s off when he knocked me back for 70/20 years ago

Another one Jack Newton
Jack could moan for England,whenever they got a result he never got his whack,if it was a bad day you could guarantee Jack would have had a blackout.

Heres a controversial one for you:

Peter Watson

what was the name of the midlands bookmaker around 10 years ago thought he knew everything i think he went to live in ireland

true wasnot

"if anyone can he can" was the motto for the tipping line.

Tim Brown (Hull)
Sid Hooper

Mick Buskins                                                                                  George WILson                                                                                Guest and Johnstone                                                                             Stan Bissel                                                                                Billy Ball

Must be showing my age now, when I first started going racing in the north of England there was a rails bookmaker called Tony Unwin does anybody know what happened to him?

Also the farmer aka Norman Heslop who used to stand up at Newcastle with I think Jim Gibson, the last I heard he bought a newsagents in the South Shields area then moved to Tenerife.

tony unwin was a firm set up by brian kirkham ex laddies pr man with the guys who owned the continental casino in moortown,leeds. didnt last very long,radgepot probably knows more.tony unwin was a massive gambler in the north in the 70s/80s,plenty of putters on did very well out of him,dont think he had much to do with the firm named after him,night all.

BURNS and DOWNES,SAM and TERRY,what a win Double