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Honest Joe
Jeffrey Bernard
This year's King George VI and Qneen Elizabeth Diamond Stakes, run at Ascot this Saturday, promises to be an even better contest than it was last year when The Minstrel hung on under tremendous pressure in the final furlong to beat Orange Bay by a short head. Orange Bay wasn't exactly a great horse, but The Minstrel got away to a slow start before proving himself to be the best middle-distance horse in Europe with the exception of Alleged. Saturday's race promises to be one hell of a puzzle and, in fact, I started puzzling over it quite some time ago. I suggest, very tentatively, that Dunfermline might win from Acamas and Hawaiian Sound.
The majority of pundits will tell you and have already written that Dunfermline needs an extra quarter mile. Well, in spite of being more of a boy in a man's world than a pundit, lean still see the Queen's horse pull it off. She not only ran a tremendous race first time out this year at Sandown Park recently, but she is trained by Major Dick Horn who must now be regarded as one of the best trainers in Britain since the War. My informant in his yard, a totally trustworthy man, not given to shooting his mouth off or making a fool of himself in Berkshire
betting shops, tells me that Dunfermline is in excellent nick and I'm not all that put off by Lord Porchester's comment to The Times's man to the effect that they'd like a bit more rain to blunt the speed of the middle-distance specialists. At the time of writing, the weather seems to be breaking, and anyway they're generous with their watering system at Ascot.
Incidentally, they're generous with other things at Ascot too and it came as a great surprise to me to see a well-known spiv who has received various kinds of hospitality from Her Majesty receive yet more in the shape of a pass into the Royal Enclosure last month. Ascot is an extraordinary set-up.
There are odd rules about getting into it — it's the only course I know where you have to wear a tie in the Members Enclosure — and yet during the Royal meeting the place is full of upper-middle-class hooligans.
Never was there a better example of it being 'good fun' to throw bread rolls at people or to get paralytic on champagne but hooliganism when the same deeds are perpetrated by the lower orders. The Queen Mother's trainer, the late Major Cazalet, would have been an ideal man to run Ascot. He once said that only people like himself and the Royal Family should be allowed to watch racing since the sport was far too good for the working classes. No doubt Auberon Waugh would agree with him. But we do have to let the bookmakers in, don't we?
Actually, recent experiences at Newbury are beginning to make me doubt that and I am becoming more and more of a Tote man. At the risk of boring you with a small post mortem I must explain that 'Honest Joe' is becoming more and more of a shit. Last Friday I backed Middleton Sam which obliged at 8-1 and didn't bother to check the pay-out since it shouldn't be necessary. That evening I discovered I had been paid 6-1. When I approached the bookie on Saturday he said he hadn't totted up his book yet (lies, lies), but admitted that he might owe me £8 minus tax. He then asked me why not collect it at Windsor on Monday evening and I told him because I didn't intend to go to that dump. All right then, why not punt it now and we'd settle up at the end of this week? This is an ancient comeon, the idea being I should back a loser with what I am owed so that I am no longer owed it. In the event I said, 'All right, I'll have £8 to win Blue Promise.' The horse skated in at 3-1. So I am now owed £32 minus tax. Do you know, the sod expects me to leave it until Ascot tomorrow? It's odds on he'll manufacture another misunderstanding and attempt to persuade me to have the lot on the big race and lose it. As I say, if I wasn't hard pressed for the wherewithal for a couple of paltry bills I'd put it on Dunfermline which, I suppose, makes Acamas a certainty. The ointment, though, is full of flies. What if Mr Shoemaker could hold up Hawaiian Sound for once and save him for the last two furlongs? It all adds up to being a tremendous race and I advise you to partake of some of that hospitality on Saturday.
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