Open Writing

There can’t be many hacks around who started their newspaper career in Fleet Street and thankfully then found their way to their local rag.

Having failed miserably at the interview I had at one of the myriad of court shorthand reporting firms that pervaded London’s Inns of Court when I was about to leave the Gregg School in Croydon in the late 1940s I faced an uncertain future.

Then a tiny advert in the Evening Standard caught my eye. The Greyhound Express which had its office on the top floor of the News of the World building in Bouverie Street wanted a youngster to train as a junior reporter. I applied and was interviewed by the news editor, Charlie Hawkins, a slim, dapper man who with his chalk-striped suit and black, centre-parted hair smoothed down would have felt at home in a George Raft film.

‘Know anything about greyhound racing?’ was one of his first questions. I’d done a bit of research so I at least knew what a greyhound looked like and that it was the anorexic of the dog world. ‘They’re very thin and their bones look as if they’re sticking through their skin.’ I said. ‘They race round a track chasing a dummy hare and people put money on which dog they think will win.’

He didn’t look too impressed, but his face lit up when I told him I could do shorthand at 180 words a minute though whether I could read it back accurately was another matter. In fact I had failed the Gregg National Senior Championship at 180 earlier in the year but I proudly showed him the certificate I was given for finishing second in the 160 Junior Championship the previous year. That and the fact I could touch type fairly rapidly and had an RSA Intermediate certificate clinched the job at the princely sum of three guineas a week.

I soon realised why I was needed. ‘You’ll be attached to our Wimbledon man,’ said Charlie. ‘He’ll show you the ropes.’ The Wimbledon man turned out to be a sad-faced little guy by the name of Harry Green who managed to talk rapidly even though a cigarette seemed always to be permanently attached to his lower lip.

Wimbledon was one of several dog tracks covered by the paper and each had a reporter attached to it. Using cards which recorded the form of every dog the reporter wrote a piece about forthcoming races giving his reasons for tipping a particular runner and the following day explained why he had got most of his forecasts wrong.

When I wasn’t making the tea I spent a lot of my time with Harry, recording his innermost thoughts in my notebook about the abilities or frailties of dogs with such original names as ‘Lady Luck’, ‘Dream Girl’, ‘Golden Boy’ which carried the hopes and aspirations of scores of punters, but which often hinged on how many dogs avoided being baulked, checked or bumped racing in or out of the bends. Then I would type it back, often correcting Harry’s grammar or choice of words.

We got on well together though I never found out if he ever actually backed any of the dogs he tipped. I suspect not if his dowdy appearance was anything to go by. I often accompanied Harry to the track where little men in trilby hats sidled up to him and had a quiet word in his ear, though just how important was the information they imparted to him I never found out.

My dad, who had he been alive today would have been attending sessions of Gamblers Anonymous, was delighted I had joined the paper. Often, Harry very kindly got him free entrance tickets to the track but I don’t think he followed Harry’s tips and my recollection is that he went home with far less money than when he arrived.

Harry and his colleagues were a kindly bunch and they all clubbed together at Christmas to give me and another trainee, who was learning subbing, enough cash for a slap-up meal and a West End show.

After about a year I decided I’d had enough of greyhound racing. They were genuinely shocked when I told them I was leaving. ‘You’ve got a great future here’, Charlie told me. ‘In a few years you’ll get your own track.’

My family were friendly with the Chief Constable of Reigate in Surrey, where we lived, and he put in a good word for me with the editor of the Surrey Mirror who took me on as a junior reporter at the same wage I had earned at the Greyhound Express.

Following national service I spent more than 40 years freelancing in West Yorkshire, still thankful that I had not thrown in my lot with the Greyhound Express. Had I stayed I would have been out of a job some years later when the paper closed but my dog racing days were not quite over.

When a flapping dog track – that’s one not licensed by the National Greyhound Association - was opened in Halifax in the 1960s two national dailies, the Express and either the Mail or Daily Herald – I can’t remember which – took from us the runners and selections and the results.

Our secretary at the time was the mother of one of our partners, the late Max Jessop, and we gave her the job of phoning through the runners and selections of each race. It wouldn’t have looked kosher if she had tipped all the same dogs for both papers, so she swapped them around a bit so that each paper only tipped the same dogs in two or three races.

Choosing which dogs to select was not quite an exact science. Mrs Jessop knew as much about greyhound racing as I knew about atomic energy. Her expertise was based on two methods – pins and names. Sometimes she closed her eyes and stuck a pin in the list of runners and other times she chose the dogs with nice sounding names. I hate to think of the hundreds of punters who lost their shirts following her whims.

But one day she actually went through the card – for the uninitiated that means tipping every winner – for the Daily Express who made a little feature of it on their sports page. Hopefully the bookies took a pounding that day. It brought back memories for me of Harry who as far as I know had never achieved that dream goal.