Any views about his achievements as an investigative journalist or is this just a thread for the negatives?

Joining The Sporting Life in the early 1970s was the making of McCririck and, in a way, the making of The Sporting Life. His brashness and arrogance made him unpopular with the staff, but Ossie Fletcher, the Life's editor, recognised his worth.

McCririck brought investigative reporting to the Life, and racing has never had a better exponent of it. In 1978, McCririck was voted the Specialist Writer of the Year in the British Press Awards; in 1979, the Campaigning Journalist of the Year.

In 1978, McCririck had exposed a sting based on the fact that Extel, who used to broadcast commentaries into betting shops, gave the off-times for greyhound races in minutes, without the refinement of seconds. By briefly delaying the commentaries, criminals were able to back dogs after a race had started.

The same year, McCririck took the lead in covering the Rochester greyhound coup, which would have won pounds 350,000 for its clever architects, and should have done, but bookmakers refused to pay out.

In 1979, McCririck hit the jackpot with "Totegate". On July 4, at Carlisle, Shine On, at 11-1, and Tinas Gold, at 20-1, finished first and second in an 18-runner handicap. The dual forecast paid 45p to a 10p stake.

Persistence enabled McCririck to establish that the Tote had developed a practice of putting winning off-course bets into the racecourse pool after the race result was known.

Further persistence persuaded a reluctant Home Secretary, Willie Whitelaw, to set up an independent inquiry from which Woodrow Wyatt, the Tote chairman, was lucky to escape with his job.

At the Life, McCririck revealed what he still displays, a tremendous feel for what matters to punters, and what stands at the core of racing and betting issues. It was McCririck who issued an early, 1983, warning against computerised SPs.






CHANNEL 4 betting guru John McCririck yesterday said it was "absolutely extraordinary" that representatives of bookmaker Paddy Power had met with starting price validators last month for what an executive of the firm described as an awareness meeting.

Colm Sevastopulo, a risk operations manager with Paddy Power, talked at length to the SP validators about the situation regarding SPs and each-way betting at a meeting at Luton airport on January 27. A further meeting was held for northern staff.

Last September, Dr Patrick Waldron, a research associate in economics at Trinity College, Dublin, and former director of Tote Ireland, published a paper on starting prices and each-way betting, commissioned by Paddy Power for submission to the Starting Price Regulatory Commission, whose chairman Lord Donoughue has since declared in the House of Lords' register of interests that he is working as a paid consultant for Paddy Power.

Having read in yesterday's Racing Post of the meeting between Sevastopulo and the SP validators, McCririck, who has long been opposed to the changes made in 2006 to the way SPs are determined, said: "We have the situation where the chairman of the commission is working for Paddy Power. There are bookmakers giving lectures to people who affect our starting prices - you just can't believe that this is going on. It is horrific."

Waldron's report highlighted a number of races in which bookmakers were betting overbroke on each-way betting, and rather surprisingly for a champion of punter's causes, McCririck added: "All the prices on course at the minute are win only, and clearly they are unfair to the bookmakers.

"It is up to the bookmakers to not take the bets that they don't like - that is perfectly fair - but to manipulate and distort the starting prices is totally unacceptable.

"It is done by reporters. Reporters report the news, and while you may not like what happens and you may not think it is fair what happens, but that is the fact on the racecourse."

McCririck continued: "If they are asked to go and give a lecture to the SP men, you know what they are going to say, make it as short as you can.

"They are asked to do something . . . I have no objection to that, but now they are going round lecturing the SP men - it is absolutely extraordinary."

Any more fairy stories that you have been sworn to secrecy about, ihal essex?

Dear, oh dear.

ps.. do remember ihal essex, if you are telling the truth, you cannot be done in a libel case. I hope this is not like the story of a manager who made libellous racist claims about an old cricketer, when he heard I was going to write to the cricketer he sh@t his pants and said, he actually heard it 3rd hand. However, I am sure you are going to spill the beans......total faith in you.

To much rubbish written about a dead man.......who has a wife still alive. Social media is often a sick attraction.

Alien: pathetic response given ur earlier post!

Big Mac RIP

Certain posters only want to slate the man and blatantly refuse to acknowledge all his achievements as a journalist within Racing.

Look Gents, don't get too locked up in the never speaking ill of the dead,  Big Mac was a populist anxious to jump on any popular bandwagon that would ingratiate him to the public. Be controversial was his mantra and thereby milk the public, did no one listen to Jason Weaver when he revealed yesterday that during an ad break Big Mac suggested they could have a contrived falling out on air, presumably to make the programme more interesting for the viewers. Total money-obsessed fraud! Sorry he's died but that's a fate that awaits us all!