When it comes to betting on the horses, the trick is to keep it in the family

This involves writing names on a betting slip and watching them come home day after day. That sort of run. Frankly, the best sort of run.

It has been more than 25 years since I scribbled down the name of a horse in one of my regular spiritual suicide notes. But I retain an interest in horseracing and a fascination with punters and their ways.

My gambling career began so early that it could almost be construed as having been a false start. I was punting at Carntyne dogs before I started school. Blame my granda. Indeed, blame both my grandas. I accompanied them on their trips to tracks, particularly that exotic spot in the East End, the very Chantilly of dug racing.

My grandas were both working-class men so the nights out had a feel of glamour to them. They wore their best suits and their most pensive expressions. Their best suits, incidentally, were versatile. They doubled up as their only suits.

I was allowed to run about, trying by some diabolical alchemy to turn a tanner into a half crown. The bookies were accommodating, possibly surmising in a Jesuitical way that "give me the child for his first seven years and I will give you the man who will put his wages on the last favourite at Wincanton".

This early exposure to gambling had the side benefit of not only me being the first in the class at arithmetic but being the most articulate on the subject of existential angst (first period after lunch).

My gambling moved over the decades from dugs, to fitba and then almost exclusively to the horses. This was much against the wishes of grand pater Mac who trusted jockeys the way the rest of the world now has faith in bankers. I devoured the racing newspapers. Later, I learned to read them.

In my latter years as a punter, I perused the Racing Post with such dedication that I could recite pieces of it later to my mates, much to their admiration, normally expressed evenly with the words to the effect that I was as mad as a hatter who had just collided with the All Blacks back row after forgetting to take his medication.

So my credentials as a punter are as unassailable as my debts. My approach to gambling was cerebral. I had my brain removed. Then I studied and studied.

I rarely backed a hunch. It was mostly horses. I respected form, I admired some trainers and their capacity to win with a certain type of race, I did not have a bet every day but when I thought the moment was right. There were times when I was splendidly successful. And, you will be surprised to know, there were others when I was not.

But there was a method in my madness. And this brings me back to my mate and his run. There is madness in his method. Yet he deals with punting with the ease of the sane. He invests sensible amounts in reasonable expectations. In contrast, I was usually unreasonably insensible. And that was even before I took the bookie's pencil in hand.

My mate has now found a winning formula. It started when he saw a horse in the paper (no, I do not know what it was doing there) and divined it carried the name of his wife. A tenner went on and the nag won. The next day when collecting his winnings he noticed a horse had the name of his grandson. A tenner went on and the nag won. And then there was a horse with grandfather in the name. A tenner went on and the horse gave the annual Reith Lecture. No, it won.

This pattern has become so set one could knit a jumper to it. Russell just looks at a paper, sees a name of a family member, places a tenner on it and returns the next day to see how much he has won.

Now, I am grateful, indeed blessed, to be free of the need to bet. But strangely I have gathered another compulsion. I keep phoning Russell to ask him for names of family members . . .