Betting coups: enthralling tales or just theft by another name? It all depends how much skulduggery you want in your racing

The synchronicity was remarkable: while the Racing Post ran a feature about the Gay Future saga, on-course bookmaker Geoff Banks was reported as being irate at the actions of a punter who had made off with ten times more cash than he was due to collect on a winning bet.

The Gay Future story concerned a sneaky 'coup' of 50 years ago which, while it wasn't downright crooked or utterly reprehensible, ended in warnings-off totalling 20 years and guilty verdicts at a Crown Court hearing. The end result was that bookmakers, big and small, ended up being scalped, while history has treated the perpetrators well, as the romantic heroes, even, of their own feature film.

The Geoff Banks Affair, as we may call it for now, is rather less morally ambiguous. Some chancer saw his opportunity and legged it with the dosh from somebody else's winning bet, leaving the bookmaker out of pocket.