Put Your Life On It: a rollicking trip from the wild west to the dangerous east

Put Your Life On It: The Authorised Biography of Victor Chandler, by Jamie Reid

£20, published by Reach Sport

Victor Chandler doesn’t have a habit of entrusting responsibility to people – or horses and greyhounds, come to that – without a proven track record, and the man given the task of writing the legendary bookmaker’s biography has a set of form figures the majority of scribblers would envy.

Jamie Reid, author of Put Your Life On It, the authorised biography of Victor Chandler, won the William Hill sportsbook of the Year in 2013 for Doped, whose subject matter was racecourse doping gangs in the 1960s.

His other highly acclaimed works include Blown, on the trainer and wartime secret agent John Goldsmith, and Monsieur X, about Patrice des Moutis, the Frenchman who took on the pari-mutuel.

It’s therefore fair to say Reid has the perfect pedigree to chart the rise of a bookmaking dynasty spanning 100 years and multiple generations, and Put Your Life On It is a racy and entertaining read.

Chandler was born into the profession, and the first 90-odd pages chart the rise of ‘The Old Man’ Bill Chandler, a Hoxton-based bookie who grew his street business to the extent he had enough capital to build Walthamstow greyhound stadium, but not before overcoming turf wars and racecourse scraps of the like featured in the TV series Peaky Blinders and Graham Greene’s Brighton Rock.

Victor snr – Chandler’s father – was handed the baton, but when 'Young Vic’ inherited the business after his father’s premature death in 1974 things weren’t in particularly good shape, Chandler’s first wife, Carole, recalling: “The business was absolutely on the floor. They had a six-figure debt and there’s no way Victor started out with any kind of silver spoon in his mouth.”

Chandler has been dubbed The Gentleman Bookmaker, but another side of his personality emerges, that of a ruthless businessman with nerves of steel who isn’t willing to let anything get in his way.

At the turn of the century his attempt to break into the Far Eastern market was met with hostility, and the triad gang 14K stormed into Chandler’s Hong Kong office with the message “stay out of Hong Kong . . . or else”.

Chandler, who wasn’t present, was soon relayed the message, but remained unruffled. Rather than walk away, he managed to strike a deal with a powerful Macau triad-linked operator, but the deal fell through when the South African-based Sun International gaming group, which was to provide the technology for Chandler’s fledgling operation, pulled out when it realised it was dealing with a leading member of a triad gang.

“So?” was Chandler’s response, “They pay their dues.”

While key moments such as the above form an important part of the narrative and provide a fascinating glimpse into what makes Chandler tick, much of the pleasure of the book lies in the unending series of anecdotes, such as when Chandler meets Princess Anne, who says: “You’re the man who upset our chancellor, Mr Brown,” after his decision to establish an offshore operation in Gibraltar, thus allowing his phone customers to bet tax-free, or when he gives the impecunious Jeffrey Bernard some money to fetch champagne for Chandler's group following a good day at Longchamp, only for the sozzled low life to disappear with the cash.

From the wild west of turf gangs and illegality to the dangerous east of triads, while stopping off for dinner with Lucian Freud on the way, this is some journey, and it's a safe bet you’ll be unwilling to hop off until the final stop.

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