How Jeffrey Bernard left Victor Chandler mortified in front of the Queen Mother
Victor Chandler tells his remarkable life story in Put Your Life On It, the authorised biography by Jamie Reid which is published on Thursday by Reach Sport. In a chapter called Men Behaving Badly, Chandler recounts the tales of some of the memorable characters he encountered during his colourful career as a bookmaker
Drunken trainers. Frustrated wives. Jealous girlfriends. Lustful bookies. Devious jockeys. Incompetent stewards. Pissed journalists. Misfiring coups. Bacchanalian celebrations and commiserations.
These are the stuff of the turf, or they certainly were 30 years ago as any reader of Jeffrey Bernard’s Low Life columns in The Spectator will know, no matter how much they are airbrushed out of the picture by today’s more bland and anodyne accounts. Jeff, as his friends called him, detested earnestness and scorned the bland and the unadventurous while chronicling racing with a passion and a savage wit that has never been surpassed.
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