On Cheltenham, On Not Having Covid, On Harriet and Boris

I was on the lash last week - not noisily or obnoxiously so but nonetheless I was consumed by gambling and alcohol for the final three days of the Cheltenham Festival. I was in profit on the gambling front, again not obnoxiously so but enough for my self-respect. Which was nice.

Our group of cheerful punters was at the course itself only on the Wednesday. On Thursday we took up residence in the Gate public house in Sutton Codfield. Not least of the advantages of this arangement (never mind the numerous screens showing the sport) was that a round of beers was only slightly more than the cost of a single pint on-course. Similarly advantageous was the attendance at Aston Manor Cricket Club for Gold Cup Day on Friday. 

Still crowded. Still expensive

It was actually with some trepidation that I headed to Cheltenham on the Wednesday. Don't get me wrong, it is, notwithstanding the dilution of the quality consequent upon the addition of a fourth day (and yes I know that ship has sailed, but please don't get me started on the possibility of a fifth day), a fine day's racing but the course has gradually become a less congenial place. Too crowded, too expensive (£7.50 for a pint - really) and thronged with overdressed men and underdressed women. And you pay more than a hundred of your English pounds for the privilege. I went in full expectation of declaring this my last visit to the Festival. Well, I must say I was pleasantly surprised. It was still crowded and expensive but it felt mildly less oppressive than of late. The official attendance figures confirm that the attendance was down on last year so perhaps our ruined economy is a cloud with a silver lining for elderly drunken gamblers. Will I be back next year? The jury's out.  

A much cheaper place to back winners (and losers)

As for the Gate. Proper old boozer. Proper old drinkers. Bring your own food. Good beer. Not crowded. Cheap. Will we be back? Yes.

Not salubrious. Answers the needs of the day

I have always found Gold Cup Day a hard card from which to pick winners - and that's saying quite something for a serial loser like me. The annual bash at Aston Manor (very busy but you can lean on the bar - not an option at the course) is as congenial a way of doing your bollocks (as we like to put it) as can be imagined. £5 in which included a top-grade buffet (excellent samosas), beer not as good as the Gate but way cheaper than the course. Will we be back? Yes.

I came away from my exposure to beer and betting with a cold. Covid? No - for reasons I won't bore you with, I've done a test.

That braggadocious grifter Boris Johnson was yesterday offering his pathetic evidence to the Commons Privileges Committee. I won't bore you with the details because I've been over this ground before. Suffice to say that this expensively educated and bright man asks us to believe that he learned nothing from the briefings he himself led during the Covid crisis. As I say, pathetic. That his inquisition was chaired by the catastrophically pious Harriet Harman might have made me lean in favour of any other witness but, and you won't hear me say this again I suspect, I'm on Harriet's side for once.

    

The Secret To Successful Gambling

A slightly odd feeling this morning as the build-up to the Cheltenham Festival cranked into full motion. Odd because I know that I am not going this year. I have other commitments. So today I played golf at The Belfry courtesy of the largesse of CDL who was kind enough to share a gift fourball with JRS, BH and your correspondent the Pig. It was on the Derby which is the least of the three courses at The Belfry but made a nice change from the mud-bound Pype Hayes and reminded us all what decent greens are like. I played quite passably as it happens.

Look very carefully and you will note that the Pig is not there.

Anyway I promised you the secret to successful gambling, to be precise successful gambling at Cheltenham. Well here it is - don't go. I confined myself to a £2.40 worth of penny accumulators and managed to show a 2500% return on my investment.  So for those of you who want to be ahead of the game, here are tomorrow's horse for some penny investments - Stage Star, L'Homme Presse, The Shunter, Shiskin, Prengrade, Editeur du Gite, and Poetic Music. Small print: you may get back less than you invest, in fact judging by previous form, you may get back precisely bugger all. But you'll never win the lottery if you don't buy a ticket. 

More Serendipity

I have a drawer designated for my use in the Groupie's kitchen - it's to discourage me from my lawyer's habit of filing things in plain sight ie. just left lying around. Anyway, I decided to have one of my too-irregular clear-outs. These things are cathartic once you have steeled yourself to do it. 

In amongst the bills for filing (I had at least paid them all) I found an old encrypted (my own weird code) list of passwords for gambling sites. These days I favour the good people at Coral with my paltry trade and I had thought that I had emptied the various other accounts usually opened to take advantage of free offers. Still you never do know, do you. Lo and behold I located fifty-odd of your English quids in my Paddy Power account. At some point I must have had a winner. This is refreshing to learn because winners have been few and far between of late. I am going to spend it wisely - more gambling.

Dignified

Just a thought - I was reminded on Saturday of another thing the British are good at (the first being the organisation of mass vaccination) - we do a mean state funeral even at times of pandemic. Militarily precise, dignified and even a tad moving. Walter Bagehot would have approved.    

Le Pig Sportif

 An interesting couple of weeks for Big Fat Pig and his fitness drive. You may recall that the Pig was for several years plagued by calf injuries. The purchase of some expensive made-to-measure insoles for the running shoes seemed to have cured this blight. But a fortnight ago the Pig was twelve minutes and fifty seconds into his first plod of the week when the right calf pinged in protest. A regime of ice, compression and elevation thus followed and the Pig made his comeback this morning. Thirty-one minutes and no damage done. Le Pig est retourne.

Despite the troublesome calf the Pig has not been completely idle. The cross-trainer has been dusted off and the golf has continued. Monday nights with the lads at Pype Hayes and an additional outing last week at Hatchford Brook where the Pig had his best round of the year (of several years in fact) such that the handicap is inching back towards respectability. On a different golfing front the Pig backed Paul Casey at 80/1 for last week's PGA and the each-way pickup was a healthy return on investment. Le Pig - il est genius. 

I've just finished reading a real curiosity of a book. Caesar was the first published work of Patrick O'Brian - a seriously good author whose Aubrey/Maturin novel sequence everyone should try. Caesar was written when O'Brian was only twelve and published when he was fourteen. It is concise and elegant. Remarkable. 

The sun is shining, the garden is looking good and it is almost too tempting for the Pig to break his midweek alcohol ban. Almost. Le Pig est mentally fort. He's going to make a sandwich and eat it outside. Le Pig est faim.

What Was It Like Before Coronavirus?

Can anyone remember? The whole bloody world has ground to a halt, interrupted by explosions of activity as people indulge in panic-buying bog roll. Not a good look. As of a few minutes ago all the schools have been closed save for the offspring of 'key workers' - whatever that means and assuming such workers have not already self-isolated themselves and their children. Has it occurred to the powers that be to suspend the stock markets as well? After all the markets are run by and for children who sometimes need protection from themselves.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not angry about all this - if the medics say we're all going to die then I'll go along with it. For now.

What else can I report. Oh yes, last week at Cheltenham was fun albeit tempered by an end of holidays feeling that soon such frivolity would be banned. Sure enough it has been. When last we corresponded I was optimisticallly clutching my Lucky 31 voucher which was going to land me some £13500. As it turned out it paid a return of £6.71. About as good as my punting got all week.

Don Juan's Reckless Daughter - listening to it now. Now there's a reason to be cheerful. Good old Joni.

I've been out running the last couple of days after an indecent period of sloth. Yesterday was dreadful - two miles and nothing more rewarding than the sensation that I might be sick. Today was better - three miles and now I can barely walk. I must rediscover those balmy and energised days of 1996 when I ran the London Marathon and lost only narrowly in a sprint finish with a bloke in a rhino costume and another with one leg. Once were warriors indeed.

More good cheer: I have regained the reading bug (it deserts me on occasion) and am immersed in several good books. Gary Imlach's My Father and Other Working Class Football Heroes is that cherishable beast, the good sports book - a record of a game now long gone with the wind. Premier League millionaires might do well to read it. It tells of a time when the professional players were treated lamentably and we should not be nostalgic for those times but we might want to stop for a moment and see how far the immorality has has spun to the other side of the coin. For fiction I am re-reading Waugh's Sword of Honour trilogy. A delight. Poignant as well because I read the first couple of chapters to Dad the last time I saw him alive. I'm also dipping in and out of a tatty old paperback edition of World at War, the book that accompanied the fabulous television series.

The Groupie and I are off to collect a wine order. I hope she's ordered enough to last the length of the curent crisis. Now that really would be bad news. See you on the other side.  

I'm Giving Up Gambling. Well ...

For any of you daft enough to follow my advice on the Grand National all I can say is that surely you ought to know better. For what it's worth (nothing in truth) I apologise.

For the record, my sure-fire tip, Vintage Clouds, was the only faller at the first and compounded its felony by bringing down one of its innocent competitors.

I'm giving up gambling. Well, at least until the next time.

matchless

On a more positive note, loud plaudits to all concerned in the matchless (Red Rum never won at Cheltenham) achievements of the sporting legend that is Tiger Roll. I even feel well-disposed to Michael O'Leary. Steady on there Dave.

Ruminations On A Year To Remember/Forget (Delete As Applicable)

2017. What to say? There is no doubt as to the person who hogged the news. An entire liberal class, in several languages, has been banging on about the one and only The Divine Combover, the supreme shit wagon that is Donald Trump. I'm sorry but even when the man does something laudable (low taxes anyone?) it comes across as self-serving and vile. Somewhere in the depths of the year I read a piece that argued for the bringing back into fashion of the word 'ghastly' on the premise that it best summed up Trump. Agreed, the man is plain ghastly. The great sadness - so is Hillary Clinton (though not I concede on quite such a grand scale), which rather explains how we find ourselves in a sorry old state where the President takes to Twitter to boast about the size and effectiveness of his nuclear button. Ghastly indeed.

It's a small thing (not something you'd ever hear Trump say - boom boom!) but in 2017 this blog passed its one hundred thousandth hit. Thank you.

Politics in Britain was almost as bad a joke as Trumpland. We had an election which Theresa May fought so ineptly as to defy belief. Jeremy Corbyn has come to look electable. Ed Balls is reconfguring himself as a cosy media personality. His former antagonist George Osborne meanwhile manages to project himself as an even bigger c*** as a journalist that he was as Chancellor. Brexit (and yes I know I voted for it) is being handled as brilliantly as the Tory election campaign. Mark my words - there will be tears, not all of them British.

Good thing: the drawn Lions' series in New Zealand, reminding everyone that there doesn't always have to be a winner. The hard-fought draw is honourable.  A great pity that this nostrum is lost on modern professional cricketers.

Bad thing: my betting record at the Cheltenham Festival. Not a winner in sight.

Good thing: the Cheltenham Festival.

Bad thing: my golf - infrequent and incompetent.

Good thing: Cleeve Hill Golf Club, where I played in the company of good men and true and my little brother won the Question Mark Trophy.

Bad thing: Donald Tru...... Oh sorry I've already done that.

Good thing: I'm still in there swinging.

Bad thing: I'm still in there swinging.

Here's to a year of sensible political resolutions, wise gambling and good golf. Some chance - I'll lay you 100/1 the treble. For those of you of a legal bent, this is an invitation to treat not an offer susceptible of acceptance. Just thought I'd make that clear.

Happy New Year.

Lions 2017: 10

And so it all ends level, one test match each and a drawn final test. Modernists are bleating that we should have had extra time. They miss the point.

JRS and I sat together in his lounge clad in our vintage Lions shirts and he fuelled me with damn fine coffee and bacon rolls. We were a lot drier than tweve years ago when we also sat together through a final test at Eden Park in the teeming New Zealand rain.

a force for the good of the game

Well done the Lions and we should not stint in congratulating Warren Gatland - I have never shied away from my view that his record with a talented Welsh genereation has been disappointing but on this tour he was single-minded in his negotiation of a murderous schedule and he put his eggs in the test basket. He did it well. Mind you his decision to leave Itoje out of the starting lineup in the first test still seems misguided.

Some observations. Owen Farrell had a testing time at centre but didn't miss a kick at goal. He would always be my first name on the team sheet. There was a moment early in the second half when the All Blacks scorned a kick at goal. Had an England team taken that decision it would be derided as arrogance - an accurate estimation. Sam Warburton comes over as a thoroughly decent cove. The put-in to the scrum has become a joke. This needs addressing or else we will hear again the Aussie cant about 'depowering' the scrum. The forward pass seems to be legal if you happen to be New Zealand. This also needs adddressing.

Overall it will do world rugby no harm for there to be a dent in the All Black hegemony. The voices of club rugby in England who seek to diminish Lions tours should be ashamed of themselves. The Lions 'brand' (as we are encouraged to see it) has a power to benefit the game at large - look beyond your own narrow horizons boys.

Oh and finally, who was the blogger who advised that the draw was an interesting bet? Yes that was your old friend the Overgraduate. Did he remember to have a bet himself? Did he bollocks. Oh well, it's only a game. 

Where's The Other Impostor?

Those twin impostors - triumph and disaster. Trouble is, in Festival betting terms, triumph seems to have gone awol. My run of losers goes right back to the first race of Cheltenham 2016 when Altior obliged. Since then the only relief has been a few each way pick-ups. It can't be my lack of skill and insight so what can the problem be? Oh well, tomorrow is another day. In fact tomorrow is the best day of the sporting year - the Wednesday of the Festival. This is the day on which our beguilement by the Festival started all those years ago. Deep Sensation at 12/1. Bill and I were on it. Days of wine and roses indeed.

I partook televisually today, ITV's first day of Festival coverage. They made a pretty good fist of it. Ed Chamberlin is a fine anchor and A.P. McCoy and Mick Fitzgerald add modest expertise. Not quite so good is that dreadful oik Matt Chapman. He clearly knows his stuff but has as much class as a bag of spanners. Nor does Victoria Pendleton add anything to the mix. But today was worth it, if only for the charming interview given by J.P. McManus. Being rich and unassuming is a difficult trick to pull. More power to his elbow.

I'll have £400k on the favourite please

I mention that my last Cheltenham winner was Altior. He won again today but at prohibitve odds on. Perhaps I should develop the cajones of the punter who risked £400k to win £100k. Or even the balls of the bookie who laid it.

You know what, in the warm glow of expectation I think I can feel my luck turning. Bring it on!

How Tiresome

Isn't politics just wearying at the moment? This was brought solidly to mind as I listened to the sound of a man drowning live on air this morning. It was of course the feeble Jeremy Corbyn. He must be the world's best-known nonentity. After the complete botch that 'Spreadsheet' Phil Hammond made of his Budget last week, savaging the government ought to be like shooting fish in a barrel, instead of which Jezza meekly climbs into the barrel himself.

Today that awful Nichola Sturgeon has piped up about having another independence referendum. I'm afraid I'm very much of the 'let them have their freedom' school of thinking. Just see what  a complete basket case SNP Scotland would become - such a scenario is the major hope for the renaissance of Scottish conservatism. And please don't start me on Northern Ireland - I love the place and the people but when it comes to politics, well, a plague on both your houses.

Big Fat Pig's pension plan

Only one day until Cheltenham starts. Get on! I see they're predicting a Scoop 6 pool of £600k on the first day which I'm pretty sure I should be able to win, so that will be nice.

 

Of Bonuses And National Treasures

The bonus? Well, courtesy of the good people at Coral that 20/1 winner I boasted of was paid out at double the odds. So 40/1 - if only it were ever thus. I wait in vain for the muse to revisit me.

OG's turf accountant of choice

National treasures: I've written before of my absolute and unreserved admiration for Clive James and, yes, I know he's not even British but he has honoured us by making this his home and here he will (all too soon we are informed) die. BAFTA gave him an award last week which he accepted with characteristic wit and wisdom. I have no idea whether he is as venerated in his native Australia but one hopes so. Perhaps not a national treasure then but a galactic treasure.

Peter Kay. If you haven't already caught the first four episodes of Car Share I command you to do so immediately via iPlayer. Simply bloody funny and warm. Up there with his earlier magnum opus Phoenix Nights.

Arithmetic Progression

I had a little flutter yesterday, well four to be precise. As Sharon pointed out this would be a bad habit to get into but don't worry I've got it under control. Famous last words.

20/1 shot - never in doubt

Four televised races from York (a lovely course by the way - IW and I had a memorable day there in an earlier age - Jack Charlton introduced us to John Charles) and I got better as the day wore on. First race, fourth place at 12/1; second race, third at 6/1; third race, second at 5/2; fourth race, 20/1 winner. Yes you did read that right, a 20/1 winner.

Great Expectations Fulfilled

Some thoughts on the Cheltenham festival just past. Fabulous, ultimately bloody fabulous.

I was there for the first three days, which taxes a man's stamina. How anyone does all four is beyond me - well actually it's not of course but I do admire their adhesion.

Day 1 - the Mullins/Ricci/Walsh show knocked temporarily from its orbit by the theatrical fall of Annie Powers. Thankfully both man and mare emerged unscathed but it was the purest sporting drama. The understandably excitable punter next to me had already embarked on his badly choreographed victory dance to mark the last leg of his accumulator - I had to tap him on the shoulder to outline the denouement. He took it well. For my part I had backed the ultimate second whose loss in a photo-finish separated me from profitability.

Sport's power to surprise

Day 2 - deemed (rather against my prejudices) as Ladies Day, this means acres of goose flesh in ill-advised outfits which ignore the reality that national hunt racing is a winter sport. Another day without a big winner for the Boy Roberts, what might loosely be described as my betting plan being derailed by the defection of Champagne Fever from the Champion Chase.

The Albion Social Club

Day 3 - never before in my ill-starred career as a punter can I recall an entire day without even the smallest consolatory each-way pick-up. This was it. There was however the compensation of witnessing the remarkable A.P. McCoy ride his last Cheltenham winner. Pernicious losing can, and nobody should deny this, take you to the hinterland of misery but the atmosphere of the Festival pulls you back. Most specifically I was pulled back by the creature comforts of the Albion Social Club (£2 membership, cheap food and beer) and a comical taxi ride home. There were four of us, in various degrees of intoxication. The youngest and drunkest did the decent thing and fell asleep after a modicum of slurred conversation, leaving two of us to roam over the excellence of Derek Statham, Laurie Cunningham and Cyrille Regis and for him to try to persuade me to join a greyhound-owning syndicate. I resisted.

Carrying the burden of
the OG's money

So what do you do when you've backed a hatful of losers. Well if you're like me you take your medicine and then get back on a horse. Just one horse in this case - a solitary betting shop punt on the Gold Cup on Friday. Coneygree. A great story, an antidote to the Mullins/Ricci axis - not that I begrudge them their success, it is just that their efforts threaten to swamp the endearing humanity of the jumps. 8/1 winner. The beast is back!

Worst thing about Cheltenham, and this is a personal thing I know - the proliferation of skinny suits and round collars. Come back the double-breasted all is forgiven.

Of Real Sport

He plays well just to annoy me

Kevin Pietersen, Kevin bloody Pietersen. Only days after my (I still aver accurate) designation of him as an 'extravagantly gifted but aggravating tosser' he made a quite brilliant century in a quite brilliant test match in Mumbai. Report at England v India

Now please note that this innings of Our Kev is noteworthy because it was made in a proper cricket match, the very pinnacle of the sport. It was the 22nd occasion on which Pietersen has passed 100 in test cricket, a feat his stoic captain, Alastair Cook had beaten him to by a matter of minutes. These are things worth lauding, as is almost nothing achieved in the non-cricket that is Twenty20. I have given it some thought and have decided that this is a subject on which I should refrain from my usual live and let live type tolerance. There are people who disgaree with me on this matter but I would remind you that there are also people whom we actually allow to vote and who will swear that Andrew Lloyd Webber is better than Mozart. Res ipsa loquitur.

I would go so far as to say that of all man's competitive inventions the game of test cricket played between sovereign nations on a spinning wicket is the very best. And that comes from a rugby man whose cricket skills (unlike those of his brother) were decidedly sub-standard. Catch it while you can because once Twenty20 takes over the world cricket will be as relevant in sporting terms as WWE.

Christmas is coming, the goose is getting fat, please put a penny in the old man's hat. As you wade through the accumulations of blizzard degree commercial blandishments, you are no doubt sustained, as am I, by the imminence of the cultural jamboree that is the Overgraduate advent calendar - twenty-four days of cultural delight and enlightenment, or delightenment as I have decided to market it. I have a real treat for you this year, the qualifying rules for which will be explained next week. The official betting partner of this site (for those wishing to speculate on the likely identity of door 24) is Ladbrokes because I find their adverts with Chris Kamara very droll.