Tips off

I think it was my old BBC sparring partner Alan Ashton who introduced racing tips to Today, in late 1977.  Alan had been sent in as deputy editor to Ken "Two Dinners" Goudie, with the duo tasked to rebuild the show after the disastrous "Up to the hour".   

Garry Richardson and Steve May were the sports reporters at the time, and both racing enthusiasts. Alan and Garry kept up their friendship in the 2004 Ascot Tipster Challenge, covered on a fledgling BBC website.  Alan did better than Garry and Steve together.

There was a theory that somehow this daily mention of the sport of kings helped with tv rights to cover racing. But the BBC had already started a drift away from live coverage, which reduced to just 13 days in 2010.  And the idea of a quid-pro-quo was a bit too strategic in 1977. 

I spent rather too much time as a sub-editor at CEEFAX helping our one sports sub type in racing results. We provided intermittent tips on big meetings - the only internal commitment was that we had to back them ourselves, usually with a trip to the bloke in the costume department's ironing room, who offered bookie's odds on site at TVC.