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End of a (mini) Era
By Martin "Can you help, I'm just 60p short of my train fare home" Kelner on Jan 3, 2015 - 7:10:30 PM

Bruce was kind enough to text me several times to say how much he was enjoying my work; but frankly I never felt entirely at home in a predominantly racing paper.  About a year ago, for instance, when I picked up the 'phone and Bruce was on the other end, I was convinced he was going to tell me the column wasn't really working in the Post. 


Instead he said he was moving the column to Saturday, the paper's biggest day of the week, and putting my money up.


What the heck.  I carried on doing it, but always felt I was on borrowed time.   I got nothing but total support from Bruce, even when he had to pull a column all about Ched Evans and the Sheffield pop singer Dave Berry (I think there may even have been an oblique reference to Operation Yewtree in there.) The nearest I got to criticism was when Bruce gently suggested I might like to put a bit of horse racing in the column occasionally. 


I tried.  I even found myself placing bets primarily so I would have something to write about in the paper.  It may have been costing me more in lost bets than I was getting for the column.  As anyone who listens to me on Fighting Talk or BBC Leeds will know, my primary interest lies not in horse racing, or any sport really, but in things like films, restaurants, crisp packets.  Eventually, it was a relief when I got the call just after Christmas, the traditional time of year for sackings (ask any City Link driver).


Because of budgetary considerations, said Bruce, he could no longer justify the column.  I'm sure that's the case.  In the current climate, it's a miracle it survived as long as it did.  Not that I didn't always try to make it funny.  I never left the column until I was happy the writing was as good as I could make it, and contained at least one half-decent joke.


So thanks to Bruce and all his colleagues for making writing for the Racing Post such a pleasurable experience.


Here are the two final columns I wrote for the paper....


Dec 20, 2014


One of T.S.Eliot's best gags was the one in his poem The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, about this Prufrock chap measuring out his life with coffee spoons, the poor blighter.   I'm measuring mine by the size of my diaries.  The volume has been getting scantier by the year.   My 2015 one is the thinnest I could find in W.H.Smith, just one page per week.

 

Back in the '80s I had a bulging leather-bound Filofax, a separate page for every day with lots of extra stuff in the back, indispensable to the rising media star, like public holidays in Hong Kong, and the phone number for O'Hare airport.   By last year I was down to a miserable pocket diary, a week spread over two pages, and even that was looking undernourished with acres of white space between "haircut," "pick up dry cleaning," and "Independence Day, Honduras."

 

So this year, to soften the blow to self-esteem, I have gone smaller.   I suppose this is what happens.   Your diary recedes along with your gums and hairline until you're left with just one page reading "Crematorium, 3.30."  Happy Christmas.

 

I'm joking of course, but this time of the year sometimes gets me like that.   The official line is that 'tis the season to be jolly - I think it's the law - but there's sadness about it too, especially on Christmas Day if your nearest and dearest are far away - and even more so if they're all over your living room eating Quality Street and watching Mrs Brown's Boys.

 

'Tis a particularly desolate day for sports fans, which is why I expect there was a sudden flurry of bets on Her Majesty the Queen using her Christmas speech to abdicate, rather in the style of Kevin Keegan when he jacked in the England job in a live TV interview, or Dave Lee Travis announcing on Radio One that the nation was going to have to rub along without him on Saturday mornings.

 

Her Majesty following suit seems highly unlikely - not that that's ever stopped me betting on anything - as Kegsy decided he was "too small" (5ft 8in) for the England job after losing to Germany, and Travis had lost his job more or less, while the Queen hasn't lost anything (Kenya, I suppose, but that was years ago, and it was always going to happen) and after 62 years, even though she and her diary are shrinking in the manner outlined above, there would be no reason for her to feel "too small" for the gig.

 

No, I can only deduce that the urge to bet on the unthinkable happening in the Queen's Speech was to add some interest to TV's most barren day of the year.   There used to be an NFL match on Christmas Day, but even that has now gone, so for those of us who haven't had a flutter on the Queen tearing up the script, breaking into an unaccompanied version of My Way, and saying Hasta La Vista baby, it's just a case of getting through the day the best we can, before reaching the promised land of Boxing Day, and Chelsea - West Ham at lunchtime (the title decider, I'm calling it), and the King George Vl Stakes in the afternoon.

 

Unlike Keegan and DLT, of course, the Queen is pre-recorded, so one assumes the hopeful punters have been privy to some tittle tattle arising from the taping, and feel this gives them an edge, which is basically what betting is all about.

 

Case in point; the Sports Personality of the Year Contest.   Like the rest of the nation - and crucially the bookies - I felt there was no way Rory McIlroy's remarkable achievements on the golf course would fail to be recognised by the voters, but my friend Jim White of the Daily Telegraph pointed out to me that the Facebook page for Mercedes - Lewis Hamilton's car - had one million 'likes' (whatever they are).  

 

We agreed if people are prepared to 'like' the flipping car, there's every chance they might call up and vote for the driver (wherever he lives, and however little or much tax he pays).   Golf enthusiasts, on the other hand, would more likely be relaxing with a snifter, looking through catalogues of ridiculous trousers.

 

I duly piled on Hamilton at 100-30, making the BBC's terminally dull broadcast, which occupied what felt like 9 or 10 hours on Sunday evening, almost tolerable.    The trouble with the endless interviews with athletes is that what makes athletes admirable is their dedication in sacrificing everything to achieve their dreams.   Bravo, but for entertainment value you might as well interview Lewis Hamilton's car.

 

In the unlikely event of the Queen hanging up her crown on Christmas Day, I hope those of you who invested collect, unlike in the definitely apocryphal story of the punter who went round a number of bookmakers in 1978 before finding one prepared to quote odds on Pope John Paul l dying within a year of taking office.

 

As we know this happened, after just over a month.   Shortly after the tragedy, he told a friend about the bet he had struck at very generous odds; "You must have won a packet," said his mate.   "I'm afraid not," he replied (and here kiddies is where you'll have to consult your dad or Google), "I had him in a double with Arthur Askey."


                       ***************

 Dec 27, 2014

 

I was a bit worried about the darts this year.   A piece in the Sunday Times previewing the PDC World Championships talked of a new breed of super fit darts professionals treating their bodies as temples, or at least small Presbyterian youth clubs.   Some were dieting and foreswearing alcohol, the article reckoned, and the doyen of the sport Phil Taylor was said to have been in consultation with "a qualified juice therapist."

 

Is that really a job?   What do you have to do to qualify in juice? Is there a degree course at Leicester De Montfort University?   (Almost certainly, and why not?   They do Media Studies.)   Phil says he spent three weeks on a retreat with his "juicemaster" in Portugal (I am not making any of this up), and his favourite is apple, avocado, and ginger.  

 

There was talk in the piece of treadmills and cross-trainers too which, if part of a wider trend, might significantly detract from the fun of one of the few reliable joys of the festive season.

 

Thankfully, from my close observation of the first week of the tournament, Phil seemed very much out on his own with the ginger grater.   My feeling is that the majority of darts professionals are sticking with the sport's traditional refuelling methods, and might possibly be interested in my services as "bacon sandwich consultant" after I graduate.

 

Not that I'm discouraging darts players from physical exercise and healthy eating.   It's just that half the fun of the tournament is the walk-on, the raucous crowd, and the little dance the more portly of the participants essay as they arrive on stage.  

 

Some can be quite light on their feet for big chaps, but still the contrast between the darter and the young female dancers on stage - "go-go girls" they would have been called in the dark days before political correctness, gender equality and all that - never fails to raise a smile.

 

There are more young players this year, and more from countries outside the United Kingdom where overindulgence is not so much a national pastime, so total tonnage may be a little down on previous years, but I would dispute the claim we are entering a new era.   Certainly, the two players carrying the burden of my investment in the tournament are comfortably upholstered enough.  

 

I have had a small each way bet at 40-1 on Michael "Bully Boy" Smith, who has the air of a man to whom the Stairmaster is a stranger, an individual who looks, to quote P.G.Wodehouse (about someone else entirely), as though he has been poured into his clothes and forgotten to say 'when.'   It may be that the tungsten titan from St Helens (remarkable how you find yourself slipping into the argot if you watch enough of this stuff) is deliberately bulking up to create space for more tattoos, of which there is already an impressive array.   But I liked the cut of his jib in beating a dangerous Austrian challenger Mensur Suljovic with some ease, and I will always favour a competitor carrying a few extra pounds.   I see it as ballast.

 

Adrian "Jackpot" Lewis is another who, by the look of him, you won't find pushing his roast potatoes listlessly around the plate, and he's my main hope at 8-1.   

 

After his first round opponent David Pallett had surprised him with a 161 finish in the first leg, Lewis swatted him aside contemptuously, 3 sets to nil, and lives to dance another day - to his well chosen walk-on music, a re-mix of Papa's Got a Brand New Pigbag, by Perfecto Allstarz.   Lewis has a lovely flourish as he reaches the oche, twirling, with his arms spread wide like a kiddie imitating an aeroplane, prompting the question:   Is there anything on TV as indecently entertaining as the darts?   

 

I might not go quite as far as polymath and darts fan Stephen Fry who said, on one of the programmes filling out the Sky Darts Channel between live action:   "For sheer, rip-snorting, barnstorming, high octane, power-fuelled excitement, darts stands alone," but if you have ever tried to play the game, you would find it hard to diverge from the Greatest Living Englishman's view that the "ability to send tungsten into a small area reliably and consistently is breathtaking."  

 

The argument about whether it's a proper sport is surely won.   There should no longer be any need for players like Andy Fordham who, in the old days when at his heaviest, was asked to justify describing himself as an athlete:   "Of course I'm an athlete," he said, "I wear trainers and I've been on Grandstand."

 

I'm not too worried if my darts bets fail, however, because I still have Andy Burnham at 8-1 to be next Labour leader, and Hilary Clinton at 5-2 as next U.S. president, both currently much shorter, and it looks like I'm going to be a TV star anyway.  

 

I've been asked to play a local radio DJ in a new Sky One comedy show, After Hours, produced by Royle Family writer and actor Craig Cash, with whom I used to work 20 years ago.   It shouldn't be too demanding as I am a local radio DJ, but I'm not sure about the character description sent to me by a production assistant: "The mum and dad listen to his show most days.   He's a bit rubbish, I'm afraid, and Craig thought you would be perfect."   Nice to be remembered.

  






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