CIRCA 2003 – not long after my Charlton Athletic (CAFC) employers procured a small contract with Ladbrokes amidst the burgeoning football betting boom of the early Naughties – your press office junior was entrusted with the task of producing a weekly betting/tipping column to promote both the club and the said high street bookmaker, who had hired a small trading area at The Valley.
The job I’d walked out on to join the Premiership newbies (now in the ‘thirds tier’) was in the racing office at Catford Dogs, my spiritual home.
So that, coupled with my dad’s propensity for a Placepot and my brother’s recent ascent to the very apex of professional gambling over in Gibraltar, made me the ideal, not to say only. candidate in a media office overflowing with non-punters.
I wasn’t the greatest young journo knocking about at the time and I was more focused on getting to the snooker hall for 2.30 PM (at the latest) than furthering my journalistic career.
I did actually have the odd idea away from whether my cue action favoured an ash or maple shaft though, and one of these was that I didn’t feel there was enough of a connection between the club and its legends, especially as most of them were local and easily accessible for interviews and appearances.
With that in mind, I suggested that I should conduct a weekly phone call with revered Addicks marksman Derek ‘Killer’ Hales every Friday, to pick his brain on how he saw Charlton’s game the following day from a betting perspective.
My idea was to write four or five pars on what Hales fancied to unfold in the game, quoting Ladbrokes’ prices. Genius.
The idea was a raging success – so much so that after a few weeks, come the Friday, I wouldn’t have to bother calling Killer, he would call me. My beloved superior and mentor, Matt, would answer the phone: ‘TC, Derek for you.’
‘Killer, how are ya? Where’s all the value tomorrow and what boozer you in?’ Killer seldom called me from anywhere other than a public house.
‘Tel, Queens Arms, Sidcup. I’m four up. Who we playing’
Unless he was on royal form, I’d have to fill Killer in on all the intricacies of the match, like who the opposition were and whether it was home or away.
Once that was out of the way, he’d take a long slurp on his pint of Nelson and outline the likelihood of just about every eventuality possible in a football match occurring. When the legend goes, it’ll be death by splinters, the mount of fences he sat on.
I’d then be tasked with grabbing hold of just one of the numerous outcomes he’d foreseen, put my own professional spin on it, and my piece would generally open as follows: ‘Derek “Killer” Hales has NAPPED a Charlton win when the Addicks host XXXXXX tomorrow.’
Bit like the great and hugely underrated ‘Quarry’, me and Killer were afforded only the one season.
DoubleSpeak 