It’s Not What You Know………. betting shop memories

[dropcap]I[/dropcap] was on honeymoon in Palma, Majorca, it was October 1961 when I received a phone call, the call was to tell me we had got a licence for our first betting shop at 148 Finchley Road in NW London.

The shop was around 80 yards away from Finchley Road underground station, we opened the shop in early 1962.

At that time the Finchley Road consisted of one lane going south into London and one lane going north, away from London. Today it is a six lane highway with three lanes going each way.

Our shop was a large shop, it also had a large forecourt where there was enough space to park six cars. Today it is a Holiday Inn Hotel, how times change !

We opened the shop with four staff. Issy (tits) as the settler, Marky as the boardman (no televisions in those days), Judy (my wife ) as a cashier and me doing a bit of everything.

Between us, we had not got a clue.

It took around three months to get the feel of things, like how many bets we would take in a day, the amount of money we would take, the big punters, the regulars and so on.

Not sure of opening hours, I know you could not open before a certain time and you had to close by a certain time, we opened 10am and closed 6pm.

No sooner had we opened in the morning then the regulars would come in. We had a large table in the middle of the shop and they would all sit round it with their papers open studying form. We supplied tea and coffee, I think it was against the law to do that but it was more like a club than a betting shop.

Among our regulars were people from all walks of life, there was actor named Peter Bowes an absolute gentlemen, also one of the best judges I ever came across, it was hard to beat him. Another punter was a Mr Raven who liked backing hot favourites. If the first one got beat he would chase and chase till he got his money back or go broke…. a bookies dream.

Then there was John Bloom (Rolls Razor) have a look on Google, you will see how much money he made and lost.
John would arrive around ten, park his Rolls Royce on our forecourt, have a cup of coffee, make a number of small bets, he never lost a fortune to us and then leave. In all the time he came in, he never laid out more than £20.

Another one was known as Maverick, his real name was Ivin Desai, he was the son of a well known wealthy Indian business man. He, like one or two other people I have come across lived to gamble. As I have said before I think it is a disease. He gambled day and night, I know there was a time his parents sent him to Switzerland where he was placed into a induced sleep for two weeks as he had got to a stage that he could not sleep more than a few minutes at a time…. it helped him for a time.

Peter Rothenberg (two other chapters about Peter), if he was not there by 10.15am, there had to be a reason. Also, one of the regulars was Themis the Greek, Cypriot boy. No idea where he got his money from and the last but in my opinion, the cleverest, was Ibrahim Hussan, a young Jewish guy from Iraq.

Why do I think he was the cleverest?

Well his day went something like this. He would get out of bed around 10 at night, yes 10 at night, have a shower, have something to eat, then go out and find somewhere to play cards games. There were at least six clubs where you could play cards around Finchley Road.
Why so late?

He had worked it out that the people he was playing cards with had been up most of the day, working and when it came to midnight they were getting tired and their brain was slowing down. His day had only just started, he realised that he had the edge. When he finished playing cards, normally between 5 and 7am, he would get the morning papers, have breakfast, come in to our shop for a few hours, have a few bets but by 2pm in the afternoon he was gone.

Home to bed.

One day a policeman and another man walk in, the other man turned out to be a policeman too. They walked up to the counter and asked if they could speak to a Mr Thompson.

I am sorry we have no Mr Thompson I said.

“Do you not have a Mr Thompson who goes round collecting bets on your behalf”.

“No, certainly not”.

The policeman explained that a man had been going around saying he was taking bets on our behalf and that he had taken quite a lot of money from punters.

How much is quite a lot of money? I enquired.

Well he got £2,000 off the actress Shirley Eaton (today approximately £65,000).

Shirley Eaton,wow, I had her picture on my bedroom wall till I was 16. She was to me, the English Briggitte Bardot.

It transpired that this person had conned people out of just over £6,000 (today approximately £200,000) using our name.

We never heard a word for about a year when the policeman comes in and tells us that they caught the man a couple of months later. He was well known to the police and was sentenced to six years.

One morning, not long after we opened, two men walk in asking if they could see the boss.

How can I help ?

We work for someone who wants to see that you have no trouble in you shop, ‘you know what I mean’, he added.

Yes, I understand, I said but we have Morry Bloom and Maxie Pinkus looking out for us.

They both turned and walked straight out of the shop. The peoples names I gave were people I knew. They were both heavies in their time for one or two well known gangsters, we never had any trouble in our shop.

Eventually lost contact with all the punters. Don’t know what happened to most of them, except that Peter had committed suicide (separate story) and Ibrahim had got a green card and opened an ice cream shop in Queens, New York.

I would like to add we had the cleanest betting shop in the UK.

One day after racing had finished I was sweeping up when the phone rang. I left the broom propped up against the counter and went to answer. When I came back there was this little guy sweeping the floor, he got the job. Every day he was waiting for us to open…. he would dust, clean, make the tea, get the shopping and do anything you wanted him for…. he was in the shop all day.

The punters loved Robert. He would get cigarette papers and do errands for them. They in turn would give him something for going and a bit extra if they won, he became the shop mascot.

After every race he would sweep up and give a clean around like in the barbers shop. He was around for about three years, then one day vanished. Still wonder what became of him.

We opened three more shops, one in Covent Garden, one in Holborn and one in Kentish Town. They were ok but nothing special.

As I was doing 5 or 6 nights a week at the dogs and the betting shop 6 days a week, it was not a hard decision when a company named Williams came along with a very good offer that we sold the shops.

That was the end of my betting shop days.