Prince Monolulu

Yes I saw him a few times and his performance was well worth watching.  I will be listening tonight so thanks for posting.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p04lx1f8

Fascinating story and a good programme too.   "Did you know Haile Selassie?"    "Yes I once met him in Bath"
h

You do know that Haile Selassie lived at Fairfield House in Bath from 1936-41? Arnold Ridley recalled playing cards with him on the Bath to London train.

I didn't know that Stark. Spoilt the joke a little now.

Arnold Ridley was president of Bath Rugby Club from 1950-52.

Would see him down Petticoat Lane on a Sunday.

Saw Prince Monolulu at Donny in the late fifties. I was nine. He sold my dad an envelope and gave me a sweet. As winning clients often tipped him after a winner my Dad was convinced every envelope had a different horse number in it ! Something had to win .
Also saw a fella called “ Tiny “ selling tips. He used to scatter large card pictures of him riding as a jockey when he was young. Always puzzled me cos he was about 6 ft 3 and most unlikely to be the little fella in the photo unless he grew 2 feet after he retired !
Anyone ant clue who “ Tiny “ was  ?

brians i dont know anything about "Tiny" other than his real name was Harry, often called Big Harry or Long Harry.
seemed to be at haydock and doncaster for most summer meetings throughout the seventies and eighties.

Thank you Shalimar, maybe someone else knows. I'm glad you remember him it means I'm not going daft just yet.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/horse-racing/54695641

I saw him at the Ally Pally.It was the show you paid for not the tips.

I am sure that fella called Long Harry used to do Windsor Monday evenings, remember those faded cards in the early seventies, the trick was the two tips were in the 5th & 6th races and he left after the 4th.

Monolulu rose to prominence after picking out the horse Spion Kop in the 1920 Derby, which came in at the long odds of 100–6, and from which he personally made some £ 8,000, a vast amount of money at the time, equivalent to £ 400,000 in 2020.

One hundred years later and no chance of getting that bet on


The biography of Jeffrey Bernard by Graham Lord relates Prince Monolulu's death in some detail. It describes how Bernard at the time was working as a horse-racing journalist and visited Monolulu in the Middlesex Hospital to interview him. Bernard had brought with him a box of Black Magic chocolates and offered Monolulu a "strawberry cream". Monolulu subsequently choked to death on it and Bernard bade him farewell.

I'd take the Jeffrey Barnard tale ( and many others related by him ) with a pinch of salt. If someone was choking on a sweet, wouldn't a hospital ward be the best place to get immediate attention?

I would agree, scrabbler.

I thought i read Jeffrey Bernard strangled him to put him out of his misery, i always thought that to be another wild tale