Cheltenham Column (23/2) to be uploaded at 7pm - General Sports (23/2) uploaded - Saturday Race Previews (21/2) uploaded - Cheltenham Festival Week 16 (20/2) uploaded - Andy Richmond’s Beating The Bias (18/2) uploaded - General Sports (16/2) uploaded
7/2/25
Currently at print, please see below one of the many tales from Fifty Years In The Betting Jungle: Confessions Of An On-Course Bookie by Gary Wiltshire who I have assisted in putting together his look back at half a century in the bookmaking game which is being published by Weatherbys and is available to pre-order online via their Weatherbys Shop website.
The book (224 pages) features 15 chapters including a prologue giving details of his personal struggles in the last 14 years since he wrote his autobiography in 2011, each of which is broken down into a series of five or six betting-related tales, whether they be from the racecourse, greyhound tracks, point-to-points, flapping tracks, big sports arenas or even a fishing lake, telling eye-popping story after story as you might expect from someone who has lived a life as colourful as Gary’s. It truly was a case of what do we leave out rather than what do we put in!
If you want to be transported back in time to the days when the betting ring was the beating heart of the racecourse with tales of mischief, betting highs and lows, and detailing the characters of the betting jungle, then I hope that you will purchase a copy.
As for which tale to include for this blog, let’s go for this one on when Gary landed a coup and some personal retribution at Hinckley Flapping Track:
I started off at Nutts Lane flapping track in Hinckley, Leicestershire, where all sorts of shenanigans were occurring on Wednesday and Saturday nights. I made it my business to get close to a local called Joey ‘The Watch’ Cope who was a trainer but also the best judge of a dog at that track. Over an educational few weeks, he gave me the lowdown to the extent that I was confident enough of winning a few bob off the local, hardened punters.
I used to sell him replica watches that I brought up from the market in Hatton Garden and he doubled his money by selling them at the flapping track, hence how he got his name. I didn’t want anyone else to know that they came from me so, I used to help him out with dodgy watches to flog, and he used to help me out with info. So, there was gold to be found in them thar hills as Mark Twain said but not before borrowing the family allowance to fund the book from my first wife Phyllis who was an angel.
On the pitch next to me stood the Northamptonshire bookie Lesley Wootton who was the spit of Greengrass from Heartbeat played by Bill Maynard. Bill lived locally and was a punter at Hinckley and based his character on Wootton. I couldn’t make up my mind about Lesley, though. At times he was a saviour like when lending me a few quid if I had taken some early knocks but he could also be a nasty piece of work as he then let everyone there know about it. And he had a thunderous voice so everyone could hear him indiscreetly blurting: “You cockneys have got plenty of mouth but you ain’t got money.” He was much older than me and I just had to take it and suffer in silence as I was dependent on him at times.
Eventually it got to the point when enough was enough so I hatched a plan to get my back own back. The town of Hinckley was best known for being the home of the hosiery business so, alongside my sidekick Gary Selby, we decided that we were going to properly pull his pants down. It took a couple of months to set up the sting but boy was it worth it.
After having a good run at the track, I no longer had the need to borrow any cash so with some of the earnings I bought a decent greyhound called Exclusive Native for £400 which was plenty for a dog back then. We didn’t want any old dog for what we had planned as we only had one shot at it. I stuck him in training with The Watch.
Exclusive Native was previously trained by John Peterson and ran regularly at Oxford. Once we had bought him, we ran him three times at Hinckley under the name of Black Trevor where he finished stone last each time following a large bowl of sausages. That put us in prime position to then enter him for a mediocre handicap getting a head start. As far as flapping was concerned back then, anything goes.
Once we found out the handicapper had given him trap two with a six yards’ start over the scratch dog over 315 metres, there would be no trip to the butchers that week for Trev. Plus, as luck would have it, The Watch also trained the one dog who had a two metres’ start over us but he hadn’t had three large sausages that day, more like thirty-three so we knew that we had nothing in front of us.
What we needed to find now was a stooge to put the bet on with Wootton. As he was an ignorant misogynist, we decided that it should be a woman. So, we met up with a girl called Sharon who worked as a part-time barmaid at the Hinckley Island Hotel who agreed to play her role. We handed over £155 on our way to the track and told her to wait until our dog drifted out to 5/1.
She was knocking off work at 7pm and Black Trevor was all set to run for his life in the fourth race at 8.15pm but five minutes before the off there was no sign of Sharon and we started thinking the worst. Finally, there she was standing on the rails.
All the dogs on all the boards opened up at 2/1. Generous, weren’t we? But that’s the way it worked so not to get caught out on a live one at first show and then we would push the prices out, which then happens in double-quick time.
I needed Black Trevor’s price pushed out more quickly than most so in the space of the next two minutes I kept crossing the odds out and updating: 5/2, 3/1, 7/2, 4/1, 9/2. Still not a bean thankfully, so then the magic 5/1. Not wanting to get left behind, Wootton was keeping pace and then went 6s before me and in stepped Sharon. He couldn’t hedge it with anyone as he went biggest. He then he turned sideways and gave a glance to me as if to say, look how I’ve just stolen that bet off you.
At that point I left my pitch and headed to the other end of the line and got £80 on at 5s with Lloyd Coyle who was a betting shop manager for William Hill and a part-time bookie at the dogs and another £80 with Ron Cooper of Coventry whilst Gary had £50 on with Dave Smith of Loughborough. There was school teacher at the other end called Hutchinson and Gary knew that he could get another ton on with him so did so. Unlike with Wootton, I felt a bit bad stitching those guys up but when you have an edge, you have an edge. Everything had gone like clockwork so now it was all up to Black Trevor.
Rounding the first bend and he had already picked up the one dog after his large lunch and then he was gone. Out of here. Nothing could get near him and he won by five lengths. We’d had it right off and I certainly wasn’t going to miss Sharon picking her up £900 off Wootton. He wasn’t best pleased and immediately smelled a rat barking at her to tell him who really backed it as “it clearly wasn’t you!” At this point I thought she might crack but she remained tight-lipped as he effectively threw the money at her. Although the profit was very nice, £2180 in total, the main thing was that he hadn’t taken it well which was the main point of why we did it.
Sharon sloped off out of the track and, as pre-planned, we two Gary’s weighing in at 28st and 25st must have looked some sight sat in our mini cooper in the car park of Barnacles Fish Restaurant to meet her at 10pm. Well, 10.05pm came and went and still no sign of Sharon. We didn’t know her very well so I’d be lying if I said that it didn’t cross my mind that she might have done a runner.
Shortly afterwards a set of headlights flashed outside from a small car. I couldn’t be seen with her after what we had just pulled off so Selby headed outside and took the cash from the car window, handing back a ton for her part, which she was over the moon with. That was a lot of money for a part-time waitress in those days but she had earned every single penny of it. “Mum’s the word” he whispered and she understood exactly what that meant before disappearing off into the night.
After that episode I would sometimes catch Wootton eyeing me up in a strange way so wonder if he had an inkling who was behind it? If he did work it out then he never let on as that would have been too embarrassing for him to admit that I had royally tucked him up. In fact, it knocked some of the spite out of him and we became a lot friendlier as the years passed so I even started to feel some sense of guilt but remained schtum. I think he also respected me a lot more than in the early days when he realised that I had become a damn good bookie.
It was a sad day when Hinckley closed down in 2006 and even sadder when we lost Lesley Wootton in 2024. He was one of Northampton’s finest and I attended his funeral. I have got a heart, I really have.
That wasn’t the only tale involving Black Trevor but this time we never got paid out. It was at Coalville and we had backed him again. Not to win fortunes but we fancied him legitimately this time and he was four lengths clear at the final bend when Sharon started shouting out: “Oi Oi, call the copper, they won’t catch this one.” Straight away the red light appeared indicating a void race.
In all my years at Hinckley this was the only time I ever saw a red light appear. The rumour was that the boss of the track had backed his own dog in the same race who was getting beat so the instructions pre-race would be to void it on the spot if he looked in trouble so he could get his money back. You hear stories about hare operators looking out for secret signs from the stands in certain situations, or like floodlights going out on a low-level football match, and this was the closest I came to seeing it in the flesh. As for Trevor, once he retired, we made sure we gave him a good home.
One post-script to the Black Trevor tales. The putter-oner was Sharon Broadley who was a young amateur jockey at the time for David Wintle and later went on to ride some of my horses. Oh, and we also have been partners living together for the last twelve years!
Fifty Years In The Betting Jungle: Confessions Of An On-Course Bookie can be pre-ordered via Weatherbys Shop website.
