Playing fast and loose – from Brighthelmston to Altman and Sharif

And so to Brighthelmston and the sports. A spot of pricking the garter, the three-card trick in the company of tatterdemalions, fortune tellers and lewd musical girls with shrewd advice from David Ashforth, Dan Matthews, Simon Holt and Rocking Billy's widow Pam. How could anyone lose?

I've seen Find the Lady practised on the front at Blackpool, at the bottom of the hill leading straight down from Notre Dame and in the car park at Windsor races, where an upturned London Evening Standard box served as a table. But Pricking the Garter was new to me until I studied William Powell Frith's painting The Derby Day, which he completed in Blink Bonny's year, 1857.

The leather garters that men wore to hold up their stockings would be made into two identical loops, the unsuspecting ‘mark' being invited to choose which one would hold a stick firmly. Fast (as in tight) and Loose was the other name for the scam, with a skilled practitioner able to loosen either of the loops and let the stick fall. Shakespeare mentions fast and loose in at least three of his plays, including Antony and Cleopatra.