Perth Ladies Day 14/5/26 - Bye Bye Badman

Me, my infinitely better half, Matthew and his mate Liam went up to Aberdeen on Saturday to see a Stone Roses tribute band. They were supported by an Oasis tribute band. It was great (apart from the absence of Mersey Paradise but you can't have it all). I like tribute bands, they're dead cheap, they're often better musicians than the originals and they don't feel obliged to play obscure album tracks to "introduce their fans to a different musical experience" when all you really want is She Bangs The Drums at volume 11 on the amp. There is also now evidence of a 58 year old Scouse bloke singing I Am The Resurrection on Liam's phone - with my now patented "sing the same note and at some point it'll be the right one". Somewhat akin to our "even a blind squirrel finds a few nuts" approach to bookmaking. I may even post it at some point. The highlight of the evening however was the Oasis "support" band who looked suspiciously like the Stone Roses "headline" band but with a natty line in oversized raincoats. The only non returning/morphing member of Oasis was "Liam Gallagher". And the lead guitarist of Oasis simply changed his red shirt for a white one, stuck on a wig and was magically Ian Brown. And it was great.

Why am I telling you this? Honestly, I don't know, other than to justify the title (which they didn't play on Saturday anyway) and to ensure that I didn't spend the first two paragraphs moaning relentlessly. I'll try to keep that to one. We love what we do. Most of the time it barely feels like work. But today it did. In spades. I love Perth as well- it is always a friendly track, it's 20 minutes down the road and the punters are uniformly lovely. But not today. It just felt a bit different. As one book put it "the powder fairies had been out in force". A heady mix of midday alcohol and a sudden onrush of blue suited sniffles and it just wasn't that nice. Occasionally a bit worse. And it wasn't just the odd person. We kind of feared for the worst when, very early on, we said hello to a group of lads looking at the board to be greeted by the invitation to f*** off accompanied by what we used to call (in the good old days of the 70s) "flicking the Vs".

A group of lads sat on the benches catcalling ladies in the most unpleasant fashion before rolling around on the floor as, presumably, an imagined slur was taken the wrong way. I idly wondered to Gary Wiltshire how long they'd last and the consensus was "not until race 1". Gamble landed. It was just odd, as we've just never seen this type of crowd at Perth and we may never again.

1) Regular readers will know how how our book will look in these maidens, losers at the bottom of the market, winners at the top and a couple of non events in the middle. We got a non event in the middle and, as our colleagues twirled, we took only the smallest of plods forward. Top two in the market placing saved our place bacon and we ended up with a reasonable win overall.

2) Bogeys in the middle of the market, Inis Oirr and Ned Tanner, and winners at the top and bottom. Favourite Largy Force was almost the best result in the book and places again were kind. What we lost on the "Trust The System" swings in race 1 we got back on the roundabouts in race 2.

3) Similar book to previous race where we stood Bold Light and Easy To Follow in the middle and had a solid result on the shortening Dubhain which also gave us the opportunity to trot out one of our favourite sad bookie gags "How do you pronounce it?"... "Number 4 mate". Jerry would be proud.

4) No jolly joy here as a late spike of cash turned Kado Secree from a big winner into a modest loser. Nothing dramatic but a step backwards nonetheless.

5) Best result of the day as we couldn't lay Castle Ivers who did nothing but shorten and gave us a cracking move forward beating our bogey, the jolly Trust House.

6) They seemed to bet them all and we had a fairly balanced book. We avoided a couple of smallish losers to get a smallish winner on another favourite, Sir Carnegie.

7) Couldn't finish off in style in the Infamous Perth Bumper as we lost the (Un)Lucky Last on 2nd in Hold The Throw beating fast finishing jackpot Killygowan. At least there was no photo this time...

My day was rounded off when a bloke in his 60s, who could barely stand up, waved a fistful of Tote slips from the whole of the day, after jumping the queue, demanding whether he'd won anything. He'd been up about 2 minutes earlier and Matthew had patiently sorted out his winners from his losers but, like the protagonist in Memento, short term memory was proving a problem for him. We had a queue of folk waiting patiently to be paid out and I politely pointed him in the direction of the Tote from whence his tickets originated. But he wouldn't have it and his tickets were once more thrust into my face. I once again pointed him in the direction of the Tote. I was told I was f***ing rude. Maybe I'm just becoming a grumpy old man but it just wasn't a pleasant day despite a reasonable winning performance. Fortunately this is the exception rather than the rule and we expect normal service to be resumed at Hamilton on Sunday. Until then...