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.