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Funniest thing I ever saw in The Guardian was on the Monday after Shergar won the then Guardian-sponsored Classic Trial by ten lengths.
Richard Baerlein, racing correspondent, and an unreconstructed man as out of place at a progressive, PC, paper as it’s possible to imagine, wrote of the 8/1 still available for The Derby: “Now is the time to bet like men.”
On the facing left-hand page was Polly Toynbee’a stridently feminist Women’s Column.
You couldn’t make it up.
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It's the "Millwall FC" of Point broadcasts: "No One Likes Us - We Don't Care"This obituary of Richard Baerlein is quite entertaining, especially the author likening the position of racing correspondent at “The Guardian” to being akin to an Admiral in the Swiss Navy!
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/obituary-richard-baerlein-1611054.html%3famp
He was unbelievably out of place at a paper like that.
Met him once there – nice enough bloke tbf.
I pointed him out to my Dad at Glorious Goodwood one day earlier in the 1980s and, with my assistance, my Dad wrote a highly-mischievous but hopefully witty letter to The Guardian’s racing editor about Baerlein.
To our shock and delight, Baerlein reproduced the letter in full in his column shortly thereafter in which he responded.
Not sure if he was doing it to make a point, or to show he was game for a laugh, but I was ecstatic about it and going on to work there with the underrated Chris Hawkins in later years was quite something to me at the time.
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It's the "Millwall FC" of Point broadcasts: "No One Likes Us - We Don't Care"‘so laidback he didn’t even show up until five minutes before we were on air and would be still ambling to his presenters chair and putting his tie on as the opening music played!’
Smooth as the silk that his ties were made of. England have been handed a weekday lunchtime kick off at the World Cup. Gary Lineker could start writing his intro now and he still won’t beat Lynam’s brilliant ‘shouldn’t you be at work?’ from when the same happened in 1998.
So many people I encountered in the media were up their own backsides, but I’m always delighted to inform anyone who is interested that Des Lyman really was the absolute laidback, witty, gentleman he always appeared to be on TV.
Gave me a rare oasis of hope for the human race back in those days.
I am "The Horse Racing Punter" on Facebook
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It's the "Millwall FC" of Point broadcasts: "No One Likes Us - We Don't Care"He was a good friend to racing as well, being the anchorman of the BBC’s Grand National coverage for many years.
His finest hour was when he interviewed an absent Freddie Starr via Martin Pipe’s mobile phone after Minnehoma had won. The BBC audience could only hear Lynam’s increasingly baffled responses to what Starr was saying, culminating with “You had the television on your head?!”
He liked racing and a bet.
After opening Grandstand, when they cut to some VT, he’d amble over to us at the back of the studio, saying something like: “What are we backing in the first race at Haydock, boys?”
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It's the "Millwall FC" of Point broadcasts: "No One Likes Us - We Don't Care"
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