Palphabet Relishes the Pressure of High-Profile Personality Props

Since my last post, celebrities have flocked to follow my Twitter handle at an alarming rate that has left me honoured, humbled and hopeful for a future in full time micro blogging.  I must say that I use the term “celebrities” with a looseness normally associated with the lips of wartime ship-sinkers.   These tweeters are household names only in the houses of men who probably live on their own, watching sport and staring at numbers on screens looking for value bets, but their encouragement has still done wonders to boost my enthusiasm for and dedication to the Palphabet cause: to move full-time into a life dominated by nothing but sporting enjoyment. 

I am also grateful for the kind comments from other readers who might not edit a national newspaper or represent the views of a multinational bookmaker!

The facts and figures on my account over the past couple of weeks seem to reflect the additional vigour I have for that cause.  Here's my P&L for December so far:

(yyyy-mm-dd hh:mm) to (yyyy-mm-dd hh:mm)

Football: £850.86 | Golf: -£123.87 | Horse Racing: -£383.97 | Snooker: £177.78 | Tote: | Total P&L: £520.80

The football has centred around backing red cards in high-octane, wet-weathered, midweek games (Fulham v Liverpool and Chelsea v Manchester City), and the racing, despite delivering inauspicious losses, includes a significant win on Gauvain last week who, tipped by both Pricewise AND James Boyle (http://betbuddy.mobi/ ), duly obliged with a Huntingdon victory at nearly 7-1.  As I said at the time, when those two tipsters agree on something, and given that Boyle's mission is to out-tip Segal, you just have to take note!

Horse Racing > : 2m4f Grd2 Chs > Gauvain Showing 1 - 1 of 1 Bets

Selection Odds Stake (£) Liability (£) Bid type Placed Matched (GMT) Profit/loss (£) Gauvain 7.6 51.39 Back 08-Dec-11 10:20 08-Dec-11 10:20 339.17

Let’s face it, those who risk thousands of pounds on the financial markets, researching the FTSE100 and AIM market movements, studying the 12-month moving averages of share prices and making decisions based around P/E ratios, EPS figures and director deals still very often end up losing their hard-earned dosh.  Yet these people are permitted, nay encouraged, to sit in pubs and at dinner parties, waxing lyrical about their investment portfolio and diversified strategies whilst those of us with a penchant for punting on sport are looked upon with pity and disdain by those who are convinced we should be attending GA meetings on a weekly basis.  

*****

A few things have made me happy to be flying the Palphabet flag over the past couple of weeks:

·         Denman – yes, I may have placed a couple of small antepost wagers on the Lexus and next year’s Gold Cup on The Tank – but I’m glad he’s been retired healthy, and his memory lives on both in the stables at Ditcheat and in my own household through my cat, who we named after the gorgeous gelding.

The Tank in feline form, wearing the famous colours of the planey2k stable

·         Matt Chapman – I’ve developed a man-crush on the ATR presenter – he’s articulate, amusing and handles live television with more aplomb than X-Factor, I’m a Celeb and BB presenters put together.

Chapman driving the girls wild

·         Judd Trump – Man-Crush subject #2.  I tipped him on Twitter and backed him with £30 at 14.5 on Betfair, but I also like his playboi banter off the baize and his happy-go-lucky attitude to life.

Judd Trumps them all with his playboi potting

·         George Porter – the final object of my homoerotic man-crush desires – his drop of the shoulder against the dumbfounded Exeter City defence was a joy to behold, and I hope he’s able to stay with Orient for a while longer yet.

Georgeous George ...phwooaarrr

·         Gary Neville – no, I don’t have a crush on him, but his scutiny of Barcelona’s footballing philosophy on last night’s MNF had me reaching for the tissues – truly insightful stuff that makes Andy Gray’s analysis look as modern as his view on women.  If he can learn how to stand still whilst presenting the show, he will have it all.

Gary Neville looking uncharacteristically still...in a still photograph

These little things in life make me happy, and keep me focused on my pursuit of a world dominated by alrightness.   It’s out there somewhere!

The Post Knows More Than Most

I hope you all joined me in laying the hind legs off Binocular at evens on Saturday.  Those of you who also took a bit of Overturn at 4.0 on Betfair will have shared in my joy, although maybe not shared in celebrating by shouting “screw you Binocular!” at the telly, whilst in a packed bookies, in the premier enclosure at Newbury racecourse!  But I’m not here to blog about my success at the Hennessy meeting, enjoyable as it was.

For last night was one of the most enjoyable sessions I’ve had on the internet without enabling the “Private Browsing” feature on Safari. 

Whilst on Twitter, I engaged in what felt like a proper conversation with the following characters: Racing Post editor Bruce Millington (@brucemillington) and football-mad writer Mark Langdon (@marklangdon – a man who summarises himself thus: Racing Post journalist who loves football and betting and betting on football) ; Racing Post golf guru Steve Palmer (@stevepalmer78 – the 78 denotes his year of birth, a fact he bemoans regularly in his hilarious columns in the ‘paper and the amazing published diary “Born to Punt”... I mean that the account is amazing, not the fact a publisher decided to touch it); BBC Journo “Honest” Frank Keogh (@honestfrank); Coral’s Head of Racing James Knight (@jamesaknight) the Editor in Chief of Sport Magazine Simon Caney (@simoncaney) and some blokes called Mark Calvert (@furlongpost) and Lee Murray (@LeeAMurray) both of whom seem like jolly nice fellas.

The fervent retweeting and replying arose due to the fact that the BBC Sports Personality of the Year 2011 shortlist had been announced, and in the aftermath Honest Frank shared a link with his 7,000 followers showing the various publications’ choices for aforementioned winning personalities: 

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/sports_personality/15895642.stm

I don’t actually have a problem with any of the newspapers or magazines, free or overpriced, whose sports writers got a say.  I’m not a regular peruser of Zoo or Nuts magazine, as I favour hardcore pornography, which is why I’m not a massive fan of the Sun either, and I appreciate that giveaway dailies like the Evening Standard and the Metro probably do reflect popular opinion and make informed choices when given this sort of responsibility.   Yes, I was a tad bitter, having backed him for a top-3 finish, that Judd Trump wasn’t in the final selection, but the real omission was that of the Racing Post.  They didn’t even get a vote.

This is a staple of literary digestion that British punters up and down the country cannot do without.  Aside from gambling, though, it also provides some of the most authoritative, well-researched and insightful analysis and opinion that you can find in the print media.  Read some of James Pyman’s pieces on trends of the turf, tuck into Kevin Pullein’s in-depth treatises on the statistics behind the football hunches, and find me any golf correspondent anywhere else in journalism who puts more effort into previewing tour tournaments than Steve Palmer. 

http://www.racingpost.com/news/tipping/kevin-pullein-football-analyst/829275/

Maybe it is because these writers know that gamblers hang on their words before filling out their coupons, but I don’t have a bet every day, and I seem more and more often to reach for the RP ahead of most other choices in the newsagents.  I will already be aware of most of the mainstream news by the time I’ve had my Marmite on toast and morning cuppa – when I get to the cornershop, there’s always so much more to enjoy in the Post.

So the fact that the beeb didn’t even consider their opinion for SPOTY 2011 bemuses me.  I doubt we would have ended up with the RP team choosing 10 jockeys or even five choices from the whole sport of horseracing.  We might have had a female suggestion in the shape of Hayley Turner, and who could argue that AP McCoy doesn’t deserve to be in there again, but I posit that there would have been many shouts in the RP’s list that you would have agreed with.  They deserved their say.  Bruce Millington himself has said more for Mark Cavendish than most mainstream sports commentators, and I feel like I have had my sporting knowledge enriched by adding the Racing Post to my regular reads.   These hacks are more than just tipsters you know Auntie!  I would urge the BBC to look beyond regional rags and sleazy mags and give this other British institution the respect it deserves in next year’s SPOTY nomination process.