Twenty years I ran a café opposite Walthamstow dogs.
Everything I know, I learned pouring tea for punters.
Bacon rolls from six, tea stewed the colour of a house brick, and half of east London through the door before the first race. Bookies' runners, old boys with their form books folded in their coat pockets, the lad who drove a horsebox and knew which ones had travelled badly. I didn't have a bet for the first five years. I just listened, my lovelies.
What I learned was this. The favourites were everyone's business — every paper, every pundit, every mug in the queue had an opinion. The big prices were nobody's business. And that's where the mistakes were.
I'm not lucky, whatever it says on the sign. I just only ever play one horse a day, and it's always at a price. And I'll be straight with you from the off: longshots lose more often than they win. Most days, even a good one gets beat. That's what a big price means, and anyone who tells you different is after your money.
What I won't do is send you five outsiders so one of them goes in and I can shout about it. One horse, or none. If nothing's right, I'll tell you to keep your money in your purse, and I'll put the kettle on.