A debacle which had been waiting to happen

There are several interesting items in today's Racing Post. One of them, sadly, though interesting, is not a happy story, because it concerns the poor people who had booked hospitality at Aintree which they won't be receiving, as a result of Nationwide Sports Hospitality Ltd going broke. This is rather a worrying story, and I feel that it does not reflect well on Aintree, and possibly with other racecourses who have been dealing with this firm. What is particularly strange is the statement by Aintree's marketing manager Emma Owen: "The racecourse has no relationship with the company". This is bizarre, and it is hard to see that it can possibly be true. The company was clearly about to entertain a large number of customers on the racecourse legitimately - providing them with admission and feeding them, at the very least - so how the racecourse can have no relationship with it is hard to fathom. This seems to be an example of semantics, the racecourse having sold the tickets to Nationwide Trade Hospitality Ltd ("Nationwide Trade has purchased hospitality from us, which has been paid for"), a company allied to Nationwide Sports Hospitality Ltd and which presumably had then sold the tickets to the latter. So we are left with a situation where people have bought (or which people, as Emma Owen states, are "claiming to have bought") tickets for boxes, or restaurant seats, or in whatever accomodation the hospitality takes place, which the racecourse has sold, and now the same people - eg Duncan Arnold, who is quoted in today's paper - have to buy second tickets, from the racecourse this time, very possibly to occupy the same seats which they had already paid for. This is just so sad. And, I would have to say (being wise after the event) predictable - although Aintree's response couldn't really have been predicted.

The Racing Post states that it is believed that "many of Nationwide Sport's customers were cold-called". In my experience, this is very likely to be true. I am 99% sure that Nationwide Sports Hospitality Ltd is one of the numerous companies to have cold-called me in recent years: the company which called me was Nationwide Something, so it really has to be the same one. The particular occasion which sticks in my mind (and I am sure that it is not the only one) came about 18 months ago, when someone from the company called me with a very unlikely-sounding story about someone who had booked a table for lunch etc at the next Cheltenham Festival and who had let them down, so they would be able to sell it to me at a bargain price. The whole tone of the approach was not just suspicious, but also very unprofessional, and my guess was that I had been the intended victim of a scam. I, therefore, called Cheltenham, and the conversation when something like this:-

JB - "Hello. My name is John Berry. I'm just ringing to let you know that I suspect that some con-artists are using the Cheltenham Festival as a medium for a scam, and I feel that you ought to know this. I have just been called by a company called Nationwide Something, who claim that they are the people who sell tickets and lunches etc. at the Festival. They had some cock-and-bull story about being let down by someone who had already paid the deposit so were kindly going to give me the chance to buy this package at a bargain price; and to my untrained nose the whole thing stank. Surely these people aren't the people from whom one buys admission and lunches etc. at the Festival - that would be you, I presume - so I just thought I'd let you know that this scam is being conducted, in case you wished to do anything about it lest Cheltenham's name be blackened by perceived association with the scam".

Very nice man at the other end - "Oh well, thank you. I'm afraid that you'll be disappointed to hear that this company is indeed authorized to sell these packages. They buy the tickets etc. from us and then it's up to them how they market and resell them. But thank you very much for your call, and I can certainly understand why you reached the conclusion which you did".

JB - "Oh right. Well, that's interesting. If you don't mind my saying so, I feel that Cheltenham really ought to reconsider their involvement in this, because it really does reflect very badly on the racecourse that you are seen to be working hand in hand with this seemingly very dodgy company. The whole method and manner of their approach was extremely spiv-like and unimpressive, and I don't feel that it is in Cheltenham's interest to be seen to have anything to do with such a company".

Very nice man at the other end - "Well, I'd have to say that my personal opinion is the same as yours, but unfortunately I don't make the racecourse's policy. Thank you again for your call."

So that's that. So I think that you can understand why I feel that, while Nationwide Sports Hospitality Ltd is clearly the villain of this tale, Aintree doesn't come out of it well, and why I just feel very sorry for the poor people who are now going to have to pay twice to go there.

But enough said: let's just look forward to three days of great racing now. We had hoped that we might be involved, as Take Me There has an entry for the handicap hurdle on Saturday, but he seems most unlikely to get a run, so Fontwell on Tuesday is likely to be his target instead.

To return to today's paper and to concentrate on happier stories, I was delighted to read that Tadhg O'Shea has been appointed to the position of second jockey to Sheikh Hamdam Al Maktoum, who is arguably the most loyal and admirable employer in racing. I am pleased for Tadhg, whom I like very much, because this is clearly a good job, and I am also pleased for the Sheikh, a man whom I admire, because I feel that he has secured the services of a man who will serve him well. Observers of this stable's runners over the past couple of years will have noticed that Tadhg is a jockey we've used on occasions, and I have invariably been very impressed by both his riding and his helpfulness. He deserves this boost to his career - and I hope that we'll still be able to find him available for a few of our runners this season and beyond.

On the subject of pats on the back, I have recently realised that I have not yet hailed the Quinlan Brothers for their achievement of winning at the Cheltenham Festival with Silk Affair, which really is remarkable as it means that Michael has become what I presume is one of only a handful of trainers to send out a Royal Ascot two-year-old winner and a Cheltenham Festival winner within a 12-month period. As with Tadgh, this is another occasion when success is richly deserved.

And another accolade which I should hand out goes to Nichols Clee, author of a recently-published book about Eclipse. Max Trotter-Milbank, a member of this town's greyhound population (although I believe not a member of what Steve Dennis would refer to as this town's evil-smelling greyhound population) recently gave me a copy of this book. I am currently about a quarter of the way through it, and am really enjoying it. It is entertaining, informative and well-written, which is an all-too-rarely achieved trifecta.

Prior to starting this book, I had been immersed in the Martin Beck novels of Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo. My interest in them was piqued twice towards the end of last year. Firstly, our friend (if it is not too presumptuous to describe someone whom one has never met as a friend) Peter Temple was short-listed for the Martin Beck Award (along with maybe four others, including John le Carre), and this event made me aware of Martin Beck, of whom I had previously been in total ignorance. And then, shortly afterwards, the very good Wallander BBC TV shows were preceded by a documentary on Henning Mankell, in which he spoke in depth about Sjowall and Wahloo, his predecessors in the ranks of writers of Swedish 'police procedurals'. It turns out that these books do indeed appear to have been as influential on Henning Mankell as the novels of Wilbur Smith were on Bryce Courtney. They are really good. I'd hesitate to describe them as "unputdownable" as some crime fiction/thrillers is/are, (eg as Peter Temple's books are) but they are good stories entertainingly written. Martin Beck is very much a Kurt Wallander-like figure (which I'd say having read all the Wallander novels before I read my first Martin Beck book, when of course I ought to say that Kurt Wallander is very much a Martin Beck-like figure). Reading these books, I am reminded of my A-level English teacher Mike Fox, who explained to us while we read 'Macbeth' that, although Shakespeare never mentioned the king defacting, breaking wind, being plagued by catarrh and indigestion and headaches, and picking his nose, we can assume that he did all these things just the same as everyone else does: it is just that in literature you can take the minutiae, tedium, anxiety and discomfort of everyday life as read, and concentrate on the crucial factors. Well, what makes Martin Beck (I am invariably referring to him using both his Christian name and his surname, because that is how the authors refer to him) and Wallander so engaging is that, for them, the minutiae, tedium, anxiety and discomfort are central to everything, and the major drama is only a side-show. (Bloody hell, if I start to extrapolate this theme too much, I'll end up watching Coronation Street and Eastenders, and reading James Joyce and D. H. Lawrence!) Anyone who saw the Mankell documentary on the BBC might remember a clip from an old sub-titled Swedish black-and-white Martin Beck dramatization when the detectives were clustered around Beck, who briefed them and concluded that they could stand down and then re-group in four hours' time to continue the chase; when one of his colleagues asked the obvious question of why they didn't just keep going, there was an awkward pause before Martin Beck mumbled sheepishly, "Because I'm baby-sitting". The books are full of similar gems. How about this, from Roseanna?: "Six hours later, at two minutes to five he (Martin Beck) had put on his hat and coat and already begun to hate the crowded subway train to the south. It was still raining and he could already perceive both the musty odour of wet clothing and the frightening feeling of having to stand hemmed in by a compact mass of strange bodies ... It had been an uneventful and dreary day, full of sneezing and spitting and dull routine. He had called Motala twice, mostly to cheer up Ahlberg, who in the light of day had decided that his discovery wasn't worth very much as long as it couldn't be connected with the corpse at the lock. 'I suspect that it is easy to overestimate certain things when you've been working like a dog for so long without results'. Ahlberg had sounded crushed and regretful. It was almost heart-breaking ... At five o'clock he (Martin Beck again) took a taxi home but got out at the subway station and walked the last bit in order to avoid the devastating economic argument which undoubtedly would have followed if his wife had happened to see him get out of a taxi". Wonderful!

And finally (sighs of relief from the few who are still standing as we cross the Melling Road for the final time) - oh yes, and before I say finally I ought to thank the Walrus for his Marinsky muzzle recollection; I'm sure that there have been others, and wonder if Asian Heights was one; any clues anyone? - I must pass on a text I received from Golden Vale Stud proprietor John McNamara. John and Terre have internet, but their connection is extremely slow so they don't use it often. John won't have read my blog in which I touched upon the work of the names czar, so the thought which came to my mind when I received this text was that great minds think alike: "'Renaissance Stables' unfortunately had another winner - PUGNACITY: an admirable racemare AND broodmare thus obviously ticking all the boxes profilewise for desecration". (And I should add that great minds think alike not only in the matter of the recycling of names, but also in the matter of the non-stop use of cliches by the media).