Jeffery Bernard next week in the Post

[Mr. Pilsen]

Quote from Mr. Bernard.. ‘People who only drink in December should be shot’ I’d be a fan of his just for writing that even if he wrote nothing else.

[Grimes]

Wow. Judging from this thread, alone, horse-racing must have the best assortment of people with acute insight, an apt gift for expressing subtle thoughts, and a cultured and somewhat slightly maverick hinterland, generally. Not to speak of a rare degree of sometimes painful self-knowledge.

I remember reading a column by Brough Scott, (who, I was told had been a very good amateur jockey) in the fifties, I think in the Sunday Observer. His description of Maurice Zilber was hilarious. Zilber apparently came over to France from Algiers, with the equivalent of ten bob in his pocket, and was son training horses for Nelson Bunker Hunt.

There was a falling out, through some internal politicking with, I think, Hunt’s racing manager. Zilber remarked that Hunt was rich but he was lucky, and he wouldn’t swap places for anything. I seem to get all these anecdotes garbled after a few years, so there’s probably only 10% of this that’s factual.

But Brough’s imitation of Zilber’s words, comical in themselves, were hilarious enough when relayed in Brough’s ‘faux’ English, mispronounced word for mispronounced word, as I think the only thing funnier than hearing an Englishman trying to imitate a Frenchman trying to speak English (Peter sellers’ cockney couturier was hilarious., is to hear a Frenchman trying to imitate an Englishman trying to speak French). An Irish priest friend is also hilarious giving his imitation of a Londoner speaking. ‘It’s ever so Noooiice’, as he would have it!

[Steeplechasing]

I remember JB’s Life columns with fondness. My favourite quote of his:

I have been commissioned to write an
autobiography and I would be grateful
to any of your readers who could tell
me what I was doing between 1960 and
1974.

[stevecaution]

I never really buy racing papers so I missed Jeffrey Bernard’s contributions to their pages.

I first became aware of the man from the play Jeffrey Bernard Is Unwell, where he was played by Peter O’Toole and latterly James Bolam.

I remember a TV documentary where he appeared and by that time he WAS unwell. A community nurse was advising him on taking better control of his diabetes but after she left he cracked open a bottle of Smirnoff.

One thing he did mention was that he didn’t believe in God. When asked why he replied:-

"Well at all the low points of my life, when I asked him for assistance, he did F… all to help me."

Thanks for the good crack. Time for me to move on. Be lucky.

[Author]

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