Matt Chapman

Good old Matt.

TBF he has an opinion and will ask awkward questions. Much prefer him to the suck ups who ask nothing.

Good old Matt.  For me his good points outweigh his bad.
Good old Matt.

All been said before saxophone but you keep believing.

Haha
To be honest I find him too much of a self publicist.

He does my head in mad dog with all his shouting, name dropping and the rest of the act.

Good old Matt.

Who can blame you, it's probably his worst area of work.  But when out on the course, identifying the issues that are relevant and asking the tough questions, I feel he earns his salary.
The guy who makes me want to watch Outback Pilots or Murder She Wrote - and they're broooooooootal - is pretty boy Bell.

there are a lot worse commentating /presenting on racing channels . if you ignore all his gusto i find him knowledgeable and informed which is more than you can say about a lot of them.

There's three things that irritate me on  tv,(matt's ok).Dion Dublin, Bradley Walsh and the "Big Drum pounding" away at football matches. To much of all three.  On everything, the drum not all matches. Dublin football, match of the day channel  2, itv 3, itv 4, bbc 1  morning "houses".

I like Frank Skinner

At least he doesn`t kowtow to the hierachy of trainers and does ask questions they don`t want to hear.

I never seen it LH. But you are right mate. Gosden draws him some terrible looks.

Gosden is not all bad after all.

Remember him on Dancing on Ice? Sacked after one embarrassing programme. Remember his racecourse announcement of Johnny G? Not asked back. Poor man's Big Mac without the originality.

Big John was simply different class.

I agree, but I still quite like Chapman.

workrider, just be happy you don't have to suffer him every day.

themightymac 11 Jan 24 19:12 
Big John was simply different class.




Exactly mac, can you imagine Chapman exposing a tote rigging scandal as Mac did as an investigative journalist?

IN THE summer of 1978, Tote Bookmakers were concerned about a successful punter who regularly placed multiple Tote forecast bets shortly before the relevant races started. In the days before computerisation, there was not enough time to include his bets in the racecourse pool, so the punter was paid out at Tote dividends unaffected by his own bets.

A junior employee of Tote Bookmakers reached an agreement with Jeff Wells, the managing director of Tote Credit, that this punter's bets, and similar ones, would be transferred to Tote Credit for later transmission into the pool - after the race had started, and sometimes after it had finished.

Two years later, the then Home Secretary, William Whitelaw, was informed: "Not all the bets were transmitted, but all bets which included winning money were transmitted. The effect of this was to reduce the dividends on each occasion."

Whitelaw's informant was Francis Aglionby, a Crown Court judge appointed the previous year to investigate the Tote's procedures for including off-course bets in on-course pools. A summary of Aglionby's findings was published in 1980, but his full report remained confidential. Under the 30-year rule, it was not due to be released until 2010.

The Racing Post has now seen the full report.

Aglionby's inquiry originated in John McCririck's exposure of the manipulation of a Tote dual forecast dividend at Carlisle on July 4, 1979. McCririck was then an award-winning investigative journalist with The Sporting Life.

When Shine On, at 11-1, beat Tina's Gold, at 20-1, in an 18-runner handicap, and the Tote dual forecast paid a derisory 45p for a 10p stake, McCririck refused to accept the Tote's assertion that it was "just one of those inexplicable turn-ups".

An anonymous telephone caller told McCririck that the reason the dividend was so small was that a pounds 50 dual forecast on the winning combination had been sent by Tote Credit to Carlisle after the race. It was not the only occasion on which bets were transmitted after the result of the race was known.

Bruce George, Labour MP for Walsall South, joined The Sporting Life in calling for the resignation of Woodrow Wyatt, the Tote's blustering chairman. When Sir Timothy Kitson and Bob Mellish, chairman and vice-chairman of the All-Party Racing and Bloodstock Committee, urged the Home Secretary to act, Wyatt withdrew his opposition to an inquiry, and Aglionby began his investigation.

His report reveals that there had been complaints about the procedures for transmitting off-course bets into on-course pools since at least 1968 and that, as early as 1963, "transmission of bets to the course after the result of the race was known was approved". AGLIONBY concluded that the procedures in force between September 1, 1977, when Tote Credit Limited was established, and July 17, 1979, when the practice of transmitting bets after the result was known was prohibited, were unfair and open to abuse.

"Unfortunately," he reported, "abuses and malpractices did occur, resulting in loss to the public, because on occasions punters did have their winnings improperly reduced."

When dividends - calculated but yet to be declared - looked particularly high, "revisions occurred from time to time, always resulting in a substantial downward movement of the dividend".

When other bookmakers wanted to place hedging bets into Tote pools, the bets were collated by the Tote but were not transmitted to the racecourse until after the result was known. Aglionby reported: "I found that, from time to time, not all these trade bets were transmitted. All the winning bets were transmitted but not all the losing ones."

That was the case on April 7, 1979, when off-course trade bets totalling pounds 60 on Lake City, the winner of the 2,000 Guineas Trial at Salisbury, were transmitted and included in the win pool, but pounds 51 of losing bets were not.

In the same race, revised 'reads' - informing the racecourse of off-course bets to be included in the pool - resulted in a reduction in the dual forecast dividend, from pounds 62.86 to pounds 5.77.

In June 1979, a senior supervisor in the racing room at Tote House invented a fictitious name and, after the race results were known, transmitted hedging bets under the invented name. On one occasion the effect was to reduce a dual forecast dividend from pounds 5.68 to pounds 4.99.

In the case of the Carlisle race, the intention had been to transmit pounds 5 on the winning combination, a decision that Aglionby described as "unjustified". In error, a pounds 50 winning bet was placed in the pool, as a result of which the dividend was reduced from pounds 13.41 to 45p.

The malpractices were not systematic. According to Aglionby, "these various abuses and malpractices were not the consequence of any arrangement by employees of the Tote for their own financial advantage", but were motivated by "misplaced enthusiasm". Staff acted to help the Tote's finances, rather than their own. Aglionby found that neither Wyatt nor the Tote's senior management team were aware of the abuses. There was one exception. Aglionby firmly rejected Wells's claim that he was ignorant of the malpractices. The managing director of Tote Credit resigned.