'I MADE TEAPOT SPOUTS TO FINANCE MY GAMING'.

Byline: Sir Clement Freud 

The first in a week-long series of excerpts from a new collection of writing by the Racing Post's late contributor Sir Clement Freud

ISTARTED gambling at the age of eight, at a bent roulette table in my Devon boarding school. Prior to that I had had no experience of money, for ours was not a household in which children bought sweets or were dispatched to get penn'orths of chips.

Then suddenly, in those salad days of pre-puberty, I received a weekly stipend of sixpence. As the maximum bet on a single number at the Saturday night roulette school was a halfpenny, I had ammunition for 12 major shots on the green baize.

I don't recall losing, which I must have done a lot, but, goodness, the wins remain etched in the memory.

Payouts of one shilling and fivepence ha'penny and the camaraderie of fellow gamblers that went with it; the language of the table - plein, cheval, deuxieme, douzaine - that made me feel as if I had become a member of a secret society of greater attraction and immediacy than the Ovalteenies.

I read the Sporting Times in the school library, wallowed in the racing terms and longed for the day that ponies and monkeys would become part of my lifestyle. In Walberswick on the Suffolk coast, where my parents had a holiday house, I studied the runners and riders in my father's News Chronicle.

Mr Rogers ran the village garage and took bets, illegally, at his back door. Racing results were announced after the six o'clock evening news; one had to await the next day's papers to get the odds. My first big winner came in at 13-4. Oh, the joy of knowing you had backed a winner - and the wondrous wait to learn the extent of the coup.

Rogers was a miserable old sod who called me 'buoy', which is Suffick for 'boy'. Once, when a tuppence eachway bet came up and I had raced to his door to collect, he looked at me over his glasses and asked: "How old are you, buoy?" I told him I was about a day older than when he had taken my money.

The cause of Mr Rogers' wretchedness was the first Wednesday of June, 1932. On that day, the Walls' ice-cream man who came across each summer morning on the ferry from Southwold pushed his tricycle up the street, went into The Bell for an

Adnam's ale and told the assembled company that his governor's horse would win the Derby. He then sold Snofrutes for one penny and choc-ices for twice that sum on the village green, adjourned to The Anchor for a second drink and repeated his information.

Rogers, wearing his 'garage' hat, had driven someone to the afternoon train at Ipswich station. On his return, his wife said: "Good news - I've taken over 50 bets." All were on April The Fifth, owned and trained by Tom Walls the actor, who had no connection with the ice cream company. Rogers never smiled again.

At my Devon school, lessons were optional and I did not go a lot. A friend's father took us to Buckfastleigh racecourse where there were bookmakers and tic-tac men, Tote windows and people asking each other what they knew (at school, people only told you what you did not know). I became hooked.

I worked in the Dartington pottery making teapot spouts at fourpence an hour to finance my gaming. Later, I stayed with a friend whose mother, bored by small boys, sent us to Lewes races with her chauffeur and a pounds 5 note: four years' pocket money. It was like having a short spell in heaven, and earth became a poorer place for it. When you have placed a ten shilling bet on the Tote double, the thrill of a penny each-way is diminished.

A disgraced Suffolk cleric took me to my first greyhound race meeting.

This happened in a field between

Beccles and Bungay where the hare was activated by a man on a bicycle.

On the race-sheet the dogs were called Spot and Blackie and Ognib, but my mentor recognised them from their daytime jobs at the licensed tracks of Lowestoft and Yarmouth. We won and got drunk, and I embarked on what was considered a disreputable way of life. Gambling was never far from my thoughts; drinking was in attendance.

As a ten-shillings-a-week cook at the Dorchester Hotel, most afternoons were spent at Stamford Bridge dogs: reverse forecasts, shillings on the nose, watch the tic-tac men and pretend you understand.

Betting was fun; losing did not matter greatly, while winning was cause for celebration. The criterion for whether or not one should embark on a gambler's life is, simply: do you mind losing more than you enjoy winning? If the answer is in the affirmative, find another hobby. AFTER the war, I worked for a year in a hotel in Cannes and spent most evenings in the casino, luxuriating in the sound of spinning roulette wheels, clunking chips, shuffling cards and the occasional heavy thud as another failed gambler jumped from the fifth-floor balcony to land on the marble terracing below.

I placed bets on 24, then 5 and 16 lest the ball narrowly missed my number. I met a girl who said "the final sevens" and I backed 7, 17 and 27 because I loved her. My next girlfriend was into zero and its neighbours and I had a period backing 28 and 29 en cheval. There came a time when every number had, at one time, been my number and, as the ball fell, I asked myself in disbelief, how could I not have backed it? In the summer of 1949 I managed a North Devon seaside hotel, spent my day off at a bookmakers in Barnstaple, ate local shellfish, adopted rum and lime and ice and soda as my drink and stuck a bet.

Stuck a bet; three words which represent the most acute agony I had suffered, then years of nightmares. A customer of quality who had arrived with wife, children, chauffeur and nanny came to me one June afternoon and said: "Freud, d'ye have a bookmaker?" I did.

He said: "Put me pounds 100 on Benny Lynch for the Gold Cup. You'll get 100-1." The reason for the 100-1 was that Benny Lynch was Alycidon's pacemaker and, even at 100-1, a pacemaker is a plum bad bet. I put the pounds 100 in my pocket - 20 crinkly white fivers, eight weeks' pay. Reward for being knowledgeable about racing, I told myself.

This was the pre-TV age and I listened to the race on the BBC Light Programme. "The pacemaker is in the lead," said the laid-back commentator.

Then, half a minute later: "Benny Lynch is 15 lengths ahead and shows no sign of slowing down." Shortly after that, he opined that "the lead is down to ten lengths but he doesn't look like getting caught." Ruin stared me in the face. pounds 10,000 was 15 years' salary. For pounds 10,000 you could buy a 200-acre farm in Suffolk.

It was 20 times the average reason for jumping off Beachy Head. A trickle of ice-cold sweat ran down the back of my neck.

By the time Alycidon was declared the winner, I had ceased to care; had lost my bottle. I never spent 'winnings' with less enjoyment; I understood how Mr Rogers felt and forgave him his boorishness. I also decided to take gambling more seriously than I had..

CAPTION(S):

Clement Freud finds the perfect perch for a picnic while following the fortunes of his bets at Plumpton in 1965