Once upon a time, there was a company called Drings, that produced a widely-advertised sausage, under the slogan “They’re Mighty Meaty Matey”. I think there might even have been a bit about “…slap ’em on your platey”, but I could be imagining that bit. What I didn’t imagine was that extraordinarily slanted piece of gratuitous…
Author: Capt. Kneesup
Traincrash, Disaster, Devastation, Mayhem, Sadness
Yesterday started brilliantly. I had done the form very early on Saturday morning and, despite slipping on ice and crashing to the ground at 1:00 am, I was none the worse for wear. The cataract operation, (done on Monday), is on course for the Outstanding Performance by the NHS award and four days later, I…
Good exciting racing on Friday and even better to come on Saturday
The mighty O’Tool posted minutes after myself – I was unaware o didn’t notify you dear readers – and while not on fire, I think it safe to say that we are both pretty well in tune – maybe even on song. The records speak for themselves: POT 12.15 TRINCOMALEE 16/1 3rd 12:45 KHAGE Lost…
If Ladbrokes did Cognac, it would probably be called Hennessy
The Hennessy, The Schweppes, The Whitbread and The Massey-Ferguson. Capital The. It’s a Proper Noun, It’s also a Proper Racing Name and as such should have a BHA rule. This should state that, if you sponsor a race for over thirty years and you haven’t gone bust, the race will always carry your brand. Not…
Saturday’s Racing Tips
Quite a busy week with business in London, plus a drinks party, an-almost-dinner-with-Sajid-Javid which only lacked an invitation, trips around the countryside handing out healing words and sound advice, you know the sort of thing. I did pop into Peter Jones and suddenly realised that my rural concepts of value-for-money needed something of a makeover….
The weekend rolls on
I’m quite relieved to be socially unattached today. My TV and a roaring planet-destroyer are calling with Racing, EuroFooty, Grand Prix and maybe even a bit of left-over take-away Chinese washed down with beer and no glass … a real boys-at-home “Slack Order” day. Yesterday could have worked out better on the tipping front –…
Those magnificent men still happily at it
My monthly perusal of Drone Wars, while always entertaining, this time contained some proper Sit-Up-Straight-and-Pay-Attention news. It was, in summary, this little insight. Throughout the UK’s air campaign over Syria and Iraq, between October 2017 and September 2019, the RAF’s Tornados, Typhoons and Reaper drones attacked 499 ISIS targets. The cost of the ordinance detonated…
A Soggy Saturday
I had every intention of providing the tips for TV racing today when I started. Then I noticed two races from Lingfield snuggled among the races, with titles that were so obscure as to make the race name redundant. Perhaps it is desperately important to remind people that this is Polytrack as opposed to Tapeta…
A wet end to the Flat season
A rotten way to end the season, but for the people of Donny, no racing is an irrelevance. Having been flooded once before, I can only tell you, that the hackneyed phrase, emotionally scarred, does not do post-flood sentiments justice. I wish them all the very best of luck and please God, the fact that…
Saturday’s racing tips
Hmmm…. Rugby….. enough said. Today’s UK TV Racing 1:20 WETHERBY bet365 Handicap Chase Cl3 (4yo+ 0-125) 2m3½f I’m told that KAPGARRY is better than his previous win her last year suggests – and the price rather reflects that. I have VALHALLA down as one that goes well fresh. It’s not a great race.
Play up England…
Just a few moments left now before the beginning of 80 minutes that could see knighthoods, MBEs, London parades and Downing Street receptions, rain down like a very rainy thing. Without wishing to sound cynical, and not for a moment suggesting that a victorious England team shouldn’t be feted, nothing succeeds like a National sports team…
Saturday Revisions over Eggs, Bacon…
What a truly cracking start to a miserable day! However, with the TV schedule amended and the going deepening, I have reviewed the situation, as Fagin sang and I have now reviewed and added Kelso. Plenty of non-runners and going changes which are at 12:00 Cheltenham: Going Soft probably changing to Heavy in the late…
Saturday’s TV Selections…
Not a desperate set of results on Friday and only really let down by the ground, fitness, speed, ability, horsemanship and skills of the participants and the stupidity of your correspondent. But for those small, inconsequential elements, we might very well have swept the board. We named the second and third in the first; and…
The first day of the new season
Twice in ten days, I have found myself in London town, and again a young person has drunk a Fernet Branca in my presence. It only happened because I thought a chum’s son needed some stiffening, in order to reject a ghastly offer to appear in STD Island or somesuch. Having heard of the drink’s…
Champions Swimming Day
It’s none of my business, but am I wrong in thinking that if five of the eight Champions Day meeting have been run on ground described as Soft (or worse), that it might be the wrong time to have it? Answers on a postcard please, secure in the knowledge that criticism of this initiative from…
You asked – we answered
Crikey, I hear you say, I thought The Tissue had gone on holiday to Georgia for his annual Penguin Counting Festival, did his flight get cancelled? No, gentle reader, I have merely pulled the transport to the side of the island’s airport to provide The Judge’s precise and very correct answers. The first question came…
Syria 0 Turkey 0 – USA 0 Russia 0
It was once suggested that the US has never actually had a foreign policy per se, but rather it has simply destabilised any region thus occupying the perceived antagonists of the US, at any given moment in time. If that is true, it is perhaps the explanation of what is happening in Turkey and Syria…
Passing the Buck…
Well the suit may be a little threadbare, and the shoes may need some heeling, but the spirit remains undaunted and with the return of the National Hunt season, it’s time to get busy on recouping some of The Tissue’s recent losses. For some, the first day at Cheltenham heralds the beginning of the season….
Capt. Knees back in the fold
I am delighted to announce that I shall be taking my annual holiday on Georgia, counting the Penguins and ensuring that the ice in my Gin is as fresh as possible. Meanwhile, Capt. Kneesup has managed to pay off the debts he incurred after mortgaging the house, selling Lady Kneesup, and visiting Burly Betty, the…
All the news that’s fit to print
Having been off-air, (and some might rudely suggest, off-form), last week I thought it time that I bring you up to speed with various happenings. Luckily while visiting my chums, I left you in the hands of the Pharaoh of Galway, who produced a couple of double-digit winners, to the extent that backing him blind…
Saturday Racing 12th Oct
G’Morning All As I hunker down in the Cyclone-proof sub-terranean HQ of Raceweb, you will be delighted to hear that The Pharoah of Galway is also safe in his Japanese hotel room and is currently predicting a score of 0-0 for the Scotland Japan game and that both Mercedes and Red Bull will start on…
How The Pharoah of Galway got his name.
Before he went on his annual holiday, The Tissue had promised to tell you how the Pharoah of Galway came to be known as such. Perhaps he delayed relaying the tale because it isn’t so much an amusing tale of Irish shenanigans, but rather the story of how a good idea often needs more than…
Bonjour mes petites
I have returned from abroad; browner, poorer and wiser. I swerved left instead of right at Nice airport, thus avoiding the trap of a Longchamps visit with distinguished friends. This would have dramatically increased two of the above trio of “things you get in France” and given the going in Paris, I think we all…
Mea Maxima Culpa… it’s work (ed)
Darlings, I fear that unless you collectively glance at the pages without my sending you a reminder. you will miss both the opportunities our tips regularly present. The first alternative world is one where you recuperate from a busy lunchtime cocktail of Brasso and Red Rull, under the arches at Charing Cross, having invested in…
Thomas Cook – an unfortunate truth
I was slightly surprised that every Thomas Cook customer seen on TV, seemed “horrified”, “surprised”, “dazed”, and “bewildered”, leading me to assume that they had collectively failed to read a single newspaper report that suggested or even hinted at the fact that TC was on its uppers; and even if it wasn’t, it was so…
Saturday’s Racing
A good start to the day by buying the First Half French Score at 11+. Even better, because it is on a Sporting Index promo offer, so it is their money! The NZ game is deeply engaging, more so as I have rashly backed the SA Hotshots (Willie Le Roux, Cheslin Kolbe, Lukhanyo Am, Makazole…
St Leger Day
As many of you racing historians will know, it was not uncommon in days gone by for a horse to run in several races over the length of a meeting, and indeed that some races might have heats or be run as “best of three”. Thus, today of all days, one should bear in mind…
Donny: Day something
A light lunch with 16 chums at Le Columbier in Chelsea, a light tea somewhere else, dinner at Chelsea Arts Club. breakfast at Le Colbert…. truly an epic epicurean trail around central London, with barely a pause for breath. Thankfully, The Pharaoh of Galway stepped into the breach caused by my abstinence, absinthe, absence and…
Donny Day 2
I was reminded of late, about the dreadful old Saturday magazines that contained vast numbers of advertisements for chest expanders, which would ensure that never again would one have sand kicked in one’s face down on the beach. One would be exhorted to try so-and-so’s unrivalled pools selection model that guaranteed a result every 100…
Donny, Leger and a proper chap
There are few races that don’t have some history attached to them. A fatal accident, a crowd gone awry, a fortune lost, another gained. The St. Leger, not least because of its age, is one such race. Currently, I’m reading Chris McGrath’s Mr Darley’s Arabian: High Life, Low Life, Sporting Life: A History of Racing…
TV Racing and a jolly day at Ascot
I am indeed fortunate that I have been invited to a day’s racing at Ascot on Saturday and I am much looking forward to some exciting racing, both there and on TV. It is a small window of R&R after a hectic week, which has seen the opening of The Lost Boy, a great new…
Hares and Rabbits? Not if William has the gun!
I was startled by The Archers omnibus this morning, when William Grundy, gamekeeper to the big estate, failed to shoot either his brother, his father or himself, in a small bedroom with a loaded 12-bore. Crikey, I thought. It’s probably fair to say that Borsetshire’s poachers can sleep easy in their beds at the beginning…
Saturday’s Racing Tips
Well, Friday wasn’t a train crash by any means. A 10-1 Irish Cambridgeshire winner in JASSAAR. My first choice CURRENT OPTION was 2nd. Two other horses I mentioned filled the next two spots – and yes Jessica Harrington’s ONLYHUMAN performed as you would expect a Raceweb tip to behave and came plum last. Still and…
Irish Cambridgeshire
A brief lull in the day and, as I haven’t been called up by The Sealed Knot Society to defend Parliament, my mind has inevitably turned to The Irish Question. Elsewhere, The Pharoah of Galway, (one day I shall reveal how he was given that name by a man whose long-dogs were the talk of…
Raceweb Update
Firstly I’d like to formally welcome The Pharoah of Galway, Peter O’Tool, who will have an irregular column within the pages of Raceweb. Yesterday he sent me an email with a 14/1 winner four minutes before the off and opened by me 10 minutes after the finish. When I asked why he had made the…
THE BEGINNING OF THE END?
Prorogation, a few facts BACKGROUND Yesterday, August 28th, HM The Queen accepted a request from the government to suspend parliamentary sessions between September 9th and October 14th – to prorogue Parliament. To prorogue Parliament simply resets the session. Any legislation yet to become law is wiped clean – except for those that MPs vote to…
York, The Ebor, Day 4 and Saturday Racing
1:50 York Sky Bet And Symphony Group Strensall Stakes (Group 3) Cl1 (3yo+) 1m1f ITV 6 runners ZAAKI 2:05 Goodwood Ladbrokes Celebration Mile Stakes (Group 2) Cl1 (3yo+) 1m ITV 6 runners DUKE OF HAZZARD 2:25 York Sky Bet Melrose Handicap (Heritage Handicap) Cl2 (3yo 0-105) 1m6f ITV 12 runners TRENDS 14/14 OR 80-96 13/14…
York Day 3
I had lunch yesterday in Farnham with Peter O’Tool, The Oracle of Galway, who seemed terribly pleased to inform me, thirty seconds before the off, that Mums Tipple could not be beaten. An 11-length victory confirmed his summary pretty well. POT had also bought Magical on the spread, and his York was all light. In…
Caesar Salad – how difficult can it be?
At my working lunch in Farnham today, (mentioned elsewhere), I chose from The Castle Inn’s menu, a Chicken Caesar Salad. It was described as being a Classic Chicken Caesar salad: crispy cos lettuce, rustic garlic croutons, Parmesan, soft boiled egg, anchovies, Caesar dressing. I asked our waitress to remove the anchovies, which are a step…
York Ebor Meeting Day 2
Excruciating pain from watching Frankie in the first, come 5th at 20/1 in a bunch finish, the first five covered by no more than 1¼l and well done the BHA handicapping team. I had the next winner on the shortlist and swerved it; the Voltigeur we didn’t bet, thank the Lord, as I would have…
York Ebor meeting Day 1
One of our brethren contacted me to say he was struggling to [a] send me an email and [b] understand my apparent support for Patrick Deenan’s definition of modern liberalism. I think I have repaired one of them, but I am also aware that I might have strayed from the path of simplicity, (aka tipping,…
Saturday 17th August TV Racing Tips
What Ho A generally quiet week behind me, but with many flurries on the political front. I have launched a petition, which might, inshallah, gain some traction. It simply asks that MPs who cross the floor or who lose their party’s whip because they have been bounders, rotters, cads, crooks, scoundrels or charlatans, face an…
The Diary
Only this time last week, I was recovering from being at Goodwood for four days and trying to find a winner on Saturday. Same-o same-o. The next day a drinks party, where I was told of a girl in Hungerford, who is a tailor. As I am in need, following the significant disruption to the…
Saturday’s Tips 10th Aug
The Shergar Cup provided me with a great deal of work, having handled the PR for Bluesq.com back in the day. We first dug them out of the disaster that was the first event at Goodwood, when ti was administrated by the great sports agency IMG. Had it been a Golf or Tennis event, they…
A funny thing didn’t happen on the way to work today.
I recently saw a Chinese factory owner say to the TV camera that two years ago, he employed 3400 Chinese from the local town. He recently installed two robots, has now doubled output and employs 800 workers. He will have paid off the investment within 18 months. A little later, another Chinaman, sitting astride a…
Midweek Tips – PMA
A Positive Mental Attitude is what is required as we try to recover from Goodwood, which was by no menas all bad, but actually lleft me physically drained. I spent yesterday with an eye-guy who confirmed that surgery is needed, if I am to avoid picking the wrong numbers off racecards when predicting £250+ winning…
Goodwood – The Facts
At lunchtime today, I met one of Raceweb’s subscribers, the ever fragrant Ms C. She suggested that – given my tips – I must have lost zillions. Thus for curiosity’s sake, (and to wipe out this foul slur), I wanted to evaluate Raceweb’s actual P&L after 35 races. Let’s face it, Goodwood provides more fun than…
As promised – a Courgette Salad to take up the bounty
I don’t seem to know anyone who doesn’t produce courgettes. You can quickly end up with a veg-basket of rotting marrow as you desperately try to find things to do with them. Even people in London seem to turn up with them, pickled, jammed, or just whole. So, what to do? I recently discovered Pul…
Goodwood Day 5
The entire Raceweb team has returned to the bosom of the Chateau d’If, and while Sidlesham, Bosham. Dell Quay, Lavant and Glorious Goodwood, have many siren calls, the weary traveller is always pleased to sleep in his own bed, bathe in his own marble bath and to have some eggs and bacon once more in…
Goodwood Day 4
1:50: BEYOND REASON was a decent G2 juvenile winner and she patent;y needed the run at Sandown for her seasonal debut. She meets all the trends and 25/1 is way too big, IF she has retained an interest. JUBILOSO has been trickier to place I suspect than Stouty first thought. A C3 AWT at Chelmsford, followed…