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Just in case anyone has missed the promotion, the RP are reprinting many of the great Jeffery Bernard’s columns every day next week.
For younger members interested in history/writing, Bernard was an ex-stagehand, boxer and a columnist for organs such as The Spectator, the Sporting Life and (amazingly, in retrospect), the Sunday Mirror.
Obsessed with horse racing, women and, most famously, drinking, Bernard epitomised the raffish, anarchic, often degenerate caucus who saw horse racing as both a cultural necessity and an excuse to avoid doing any proper work.
His columns in the Spectator were famously described as a suicide note in weekly parts and, at times when he was too drunk to write, the weekly was forced to print the famous phrase "Jeffery Bernard is Unwell" in lieu of that week’s insights – a phrase which spawned a popular West End play.
There are so many stories he told, but my favourite (and possibly the most inspirational), is the Taxman story.
Bernard seldom paid tax on time and one day, hungover, crippled with illness and in the midst of a losing run to end losing runs, an ominous demand from the Revenue floated onto his doormat.
Unable to pay it, Bernard was facing ruin and, in those days, a leisurely stay in the Scrubs.
Shrugging his shoulders, Bernard gets dressed, buys a copy of the Sporting Life from his corner shop, selects three horses recommended by their Newmarket gallops correspondent, backs them in a treble with everything he has, (leaving enough for a heavy Vodka lunch at the Coach in Soho), returns home and retires to bed for the afternoon.
In the evening, he discovered that all three horses had won. The great man was back in business!
An inspiration to us all. I strongly recommend a read this week. No-one in today’s racing scene comes close.
There are so many stories he told, but my favourite (and possibly the
most inspirational
), is the Taxman story.
Bernard seldom paid tax on time and one day, hungover, crippled with illness and in the midst of a losing run to end losing runs, an ominous demand from the Revenue floated onto his doormat.
Unable to pay it, Bernard was facing ruin and, in those days, a leisurely stay in the Scrubs.
Shrugging his shoulders, Bernard gets dressed, buys a copy of the Sporting Life from his corner shop, selects three horses recommended by their Newmarket gallops correspondent, backs them in a treble with everything he has, (leaving enough for a heavy Vodka lunch at the Coach in Soho), returns home and retires to bed for the afternoon.
In the evening, he discovered that all three horses had won. The great man was back in business!
An inspiration to us all
. I strongly recommend a read this week. No-one in today’s racing scene comes close.
I’m guessing you’re meaning ‘inspiration’ in a light-hearted kind of way becuase I can’t for the life of me understand why anyone would find this story inspirational.
It basically says, if you have a debt that you can’t pay then go out and spend your last pennies gambling and getting hammered, you never know, your luck might change.
- Total Posts 17716
I’m guessing you’re meaning ‘inspiration’ in a light-hearted kind of way becuase I can’t for the life of me understand why anyone would find this story inspirational.
"Inspirational"
because Bernard also happened to be a tremendous writer, when not famously
"unwell"
. He could make being on the verge of physical and financial dissolution riotously funny as well as deeply chilling. In his lighter way, he was an artist in the spirit of a lush, British Dostoyevsky; and it’s truly marvellous than many people will get the chance to be inspired by that writing to pick themselves up, and get themselves in perspective, once again.
Perhaps I’ll change my mind on reading this series, but I’ve always thought that Jeffrey Bernard was terribly overrated. He rarely wrote an elegant sentence, and never turned a memorable phrase – in the pieces of his that I read, anyway. (I may have caught him at the wrong end of his career.) It seemed to me that he was revered for his incorrigibility rather than for anything he actually achieved in print.
I’ve just finished re-reading Talking Horses (after losing my original copy but picking one up the other week for 81p on Amazon).
Full of highlights but here’s one I like.
"I once went to Newmarket to interview Lester Piggott for The Sunday Times. He rode two hot-pots for a big trainer on the gallops that morning and when he got off the the second one he said it was a Derby prospect. On the way back to his house we came across a loose horse that had obviously thrown its stable lad on the way home and was now standing stupidly in the middle of the road. It was the Derby prospect. I pointed it out to Lester and suggested we stop to get hold of it – after all, it could easily be smashed up by a car. Lester smiled rather wickedly: ‘No Jeffrey. You cannot catch hold of a loose horse. You can spend all bloody day hanging on to it.’ I thought this a charmingly cynical approach."
I always try to have a pint or two in the Coach and Horses when in London in homage to the most entertaining racing writer I’ve ever read. He wasn’t a hero, in reality he lived a pretty wretched life, but he had a knack of finding his way to the truth of the human condition that only the greatest writers possess.
I’d highly recommend anyone who hasn’t read him to track down his material on amazon or ebay.
I’m guessing you’re meaning ‘inspiration’ in a light-hearted kind of way becuase I can’t for the life of me understand why anyone would find this story inspirational.
"Inspirational"
because Bernard also happened to be a tremendous writer, when not famously
"unwell"
. He could make being on the verge of physical and financial dissolution riotously funny as well as deeply chilling. In his lighter way, he was an artist in the spirit of a lush, British Dostoyevsky; and it’s truly marvellous than many people will get the chance to be inspired by that writing to pick themselves up, and get themselves in perspective, once again.
This may be the case Pinza, but I was merely responding to the OP saying that a specific story – the tax story – was perhaps his most inspirational story.
I have no dispute if the OP believes Bernard to be inspirational on the whole.
But then again Pinza, you do have a habit, and history, of twisting what people say don’t you
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But then again Pinza, you do have a habit, and history, of twisting what people say don’t you
And you, dear
OneEye
, have a habit and history of sprinkling every debate into which you stick your oar, with your petty little pepperpot of personal digs. You could learn a bit from Bernard in the generosity department too, old chap.
I freely admit that I have a habit and history of bothering to
analyse
what people say, which I admit some people do not like. They’d rather that their verbal vomit was greeted with open-mouthed acceptance. Tough.
Like Jeffrey once said: I always thought that Peter O’Toole was more like the public image of me, and much more colourful than I am myself.
Gambling Only Pays When You're Winning
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I liked his Talking Horses book.
Surprised the Post are publishing Bernard’s old Sporting Life pieces considering the editorial policy there is never to laugh about the sport, never to admit most of us lose most of the time or admit even in general terms that jockeys pull horses, which they do and which Bernard and Jamie Reid in his enjoyable A Licence to Print Money philosophically accept as part of the game.
Their printing them seems almost an admission of defeat, that their own columnists are dull as ditchwater, which they are. The only two worth a light are Mark Winstanley and Richard Birch, who is tucked away at the back where no-one can find him. Winstanley, it seems to me, lives the racing life. I saw him at Brighton recently, wandering from finish line back to bar, looking dejected and scruffy but, I imagined, still with that great belief that animates all of us who follow the Turf: that the life-changing win is round the corner and that all the form study is worth it and that, for better for worse, it is a great sport.
I also saw Dave Nevison at Brighton, drinking with David Ashforth. Nevison was dressed like a 25-year-old – mid life crisis?
He could be very funny indeed, at least in print, but in real life rather tiresome, I’d imagine.
Thankfully, the days when being habitually drunk is considered amusing have long gone.
‘A picture paints a thousand words’ as the saying goes: in Bernard’s case it was a thousand words painting a series of vignettes that ranged from the disturbingly black, black, black to the most eye-wateringly vivid technicolour
A terrific writer whose prose, though undoubtedly littered with the humour, insight and turn-of-phrase others have mentioned, always had at least the spectral shadow of pathos and desperation hanging over it that walks hand-in-hand with those who choose to lead a lfe dedicated to the pursuit of louche dissolute hedonism
Does that ring a bell fellow members of the punting fraternity and sorority?
My favourite writer on The Sporting Life remains Ian Carnaby; his wistful, reflective musings on the Turf had much of the insight and candour of Bernard’s but were presented in an all together more gentle manner, as would be expected of a gentler man
Jeff was of his time I suspect: the product of a scruffier, smellier more libertarian age and one who revelled in it. It will be interesting to see what brave new millennial youth makes of it all
Drone, you probably already know but just in case, Ian Carnaby does an occasional column for the racehorse.com website.
http://www.the-racehorse.com/racing/carnabys_view
Look forward to familiarising myself with Bernard’s writing in the near future.
Incredibly the first Carnaby article,
David and Vitas and Me
, mentions how he got himself out of a financial hole with a winning treble!
OneEye,
Along with a few of Bukowski’s epigraphs, that story is my personal Sermon on the Mount.
Forget the drink – that confused matters. Bernard was a legendary soak and everything he did and wrote has to be taken in that context – and as Venusian comments, that drinking-as-literary- statement/way-of-life was of its time. Now its frowned upon, as you know – like smoking and gluttony.
This story says to me that no matter how bad it gets as a gambler – no matter how cruel the Gods – there’s always hope.
And another race.
I personally find that story highly inspirational and make no apologies for it! Sounds like the ultimate great day.
Max your right it was classic stuff , and a small insight into racing in the good old times
A lot of cornflake/ nerdy /. pc columnists have the stage now , heavens help us for the stagnation of wit and pure class , as for prose it doesnt exist now ,
If you guys want to re visit some great sports writers , try starting off with Con Houlihan who wrote in Ireland for years , his grasp of the punters view was endorsed with some of the most eye watering stuff ever , sheer class pure and simple , and not a single politically correct sentence in sight
well done sir
Rick(ster )
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