Racing would be all the poorer without characters like John Banks. When the famous bookmaker died from cancer last week, aged 68, the betting fraternity lost one of its 'greats'. And Ladbrokes, sadly, lost an old foe.
After starting as a bookmaker at the Mount Vernon greyhound track in his native Glasgow, Banks soon established himself, in the 1960s, as one of the leading racecourse bookmakers of his generation. He was flamboyant, some would say flash, but there is no telling the respect he engendered in his fellow bookmakers and the punters. He was prepared to 'stand' horses for huge amounts, and famously lost £60,000 when Persian War won the 1970 Champion Hurdle. In the same month, he might have lost nearly three times as much on the Lincoln Handicap at Doncaster, but just escaped.
In a prep race for Cheltenham, Persian War had run against Orient War, one of Banks's many horses, at Nottingham. Orient War's jockey told Banks that he could hear Persian War gurgling up the home straight, and that persuaded Banks to lay him heavily for the Champion. Banks, always outwardly magnanimous in defeat, was dining in the Queen's Hotel in Cheltenham on the evening after the Champion Hurdle, and sent over a bottle of champagne to Henry Alper, Persian War's owner who was at another table.
A few days later Banks was more successful - but he had to sweat. When Prince de Galles was favourite for the Lincoln, Banks fielded against him to such an extent that he stood to lose £156,000. Lester Piggott failed by a neck to land the gamble, and Banks had one of several notable victories over Ladbrokes, and their supremo Cyril Stein, who had been among the biggest backers of Prince de Galles.
Banks was extremely active off-course with 34 betting shops, which he referred to as 'money factories'. He sold them to Mecca in 1972 for a reputed £1 million. David McAllister, his right-hand man at the time, recalls some of the pioneering markets Banks established from his head office in Sauchiehall Street, Glasgow. 'He introduced handicap betting on the football and when Muhammad Ali fought Sonny Liston we stayed open through the night. He took bets on Come Dancing . In 1965, John even bet on when Goldie the eagle would be caught after he escaped from London Zoo.'
Banks was the master of self-publicity. He gave out yellow badges at the races, 'John Banks is my bookie', and would travel to the track by yellow Rolls Royce, E-type Jaguar or private plane.
Before his infamous 'warning off' for three years from 1978 for paying the jockey John Francome for information, Banks dominated the betting rings of the 1960s and 1970s, something that intensely annoyed Stein at Ladbrokes. Stein set out to put Banks in his place, and failed.
A story told by one of Banks's racecourse employees of the time, Jim Murphy, sums up that period. As much as Stein tried, Banks was one step ahead. Stein was using another bookmaker to send money back to the course to affect the market, but Banks worked this out and decided to do something about it. At one Newcastle meeting, a Banks horse, Thika, was down to run. The night before the race, Banks instructed McAllister to ring the suspect bookie first thing in the morning. McAllister was to place a bet of £100 on Thika. If Banks was right about the bookie's links with Ladbrokes, the bookie would be sure to contact Stein to tell him about the bet. Banks was expecting Stein to put two and two together and make five. And he was right.
It was the early stages of betting at the track and Ladbrokes reps were running around the ring backing Thika. One approached Banks himself, asking for £2,000 at 7-2. Banks played coy and laid 7-2 to £50. This made the rep even more certain that Banks was backing his own horse, so he asked for £2,000 at the new price of 3-1. Another £50 was laid. The price was now 5-2. Once again Stein's man went in, asking for '£5,000 to £2,000'. 'It's a bet,' said Banks.
The message came for the Ladbrokes men to put more money on Thika.
'What's the price now?' one asked Banks. 'Three to one,' he replied, and turned his back to face the members' enclosure. The price started to go out to 4-1, then 5-1 and Stein's employees panicked. One of them got on the blower: 'The horse is drifting now, what should we do?'
'Of course it is drifting, Banks must have backed it at starting price. Put more money on,' was the office's response. Thika trailed in down the field. Stein and Ladbrokes had been routed.
Other bookies took a pasting, too. When Banks's pilot, a former Qantas man called John Grindon, became well known around the tracks, Banks had an idea for a ruse at Thirsk. Banks asked Grindon: 'You know Mr Joyce, the bookmaker? He was with us in the plane the other day. Go and have a fiver on my horse, Stardale, with him.'
Grindon was rather distinctive in the betting ring in his full pilot's uniform. Joyce fell for the ploy and sent his men round the ring backing Stardale. When Stardale ran appallingly, it was not only Joyce who was distressed. Grindon told Banks: 'I thought you knew more about this business, I lost a fiver on that.'
'But I gave you the fiver!' said Banks, who had had a good bet on the winner, at odds augmented by the bogus gamble on Stardale.
When Banks returned from his enforced exile - he appealed against his ban but failed - his flamboyance and brashness had gone. He had toned down his act, kept out of the public eye and many thought he had been tamed. But he had, as one of his daughters, Sandy, puts it 'discovered life', spending more time with his family and taking up golf.
After his return to the course in 1981, he may have been less noticeable, but was still razor sharp, as two members of the betting fraternity discovered on a train from London to York. A noted backer, Johnny 'Lights' Hurndall, and bookmaker John Jenkins were looking for someone to play cards and Banks volunteered.
'What are you playing?' he said.
'Kalookie,' said Lights.
'I'm not sure I know that one. How many cards do you get?' asked Banks.
'Thirteen, John. Are you in?'
'I'm in,' came the reply.
By Peterborough, the game was over. Lights and Jenkins had not a penny between them, and as they arrived at the track in York, Lights was moaning to Murphy: 'I haven't got any readies, so I'm going to have to have all my bets on credit. He's a bit lucky at cards is Banko.' Murphy intimated that luck may not have played much of a part.
But Banks had a problem. His clerk, the man who wrote down the bets, had not turned up. Murphy had the solution: 'Lights knows how to clerk.'
So Lights ate humble pie and clerked for Banks all day. Six races, six winning races for the bookmaker. On the train home, Banks handed his substitute member of staff his wages for the day: £1,800. Lights' eyes nearly popped out of his head.
Banks continued to lay frighteningly big bets. His son, Geoffrey, now a rails' bookmaker in his own right, recalls a day at the 1990 Cheltenham Festival. 'He laid an each-way bet on a 66-1 shot, New Halen, in the last race on the second day to another bookmaker, and it won. He lost £62,500 on that one bet, but you wouldn't have known it. He was quite fearless and cracked away for the rest of the meeting. He finished up winning good money. There never was a bookmaker like him for turning things in his favour.'
When throat cancer took hold, Banks did not want nurses. He insisted that his wife, Anne Marie, and daughters nurse him. After all, as his daughter Joanna, speaking at his memorial service last Thursday, said: 'He was rather accustomed to getting his own way.'
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