Britain’s oddest odds
For 40 years, William Hill’s Graham Sharpe calculated bets on everything – from who shot JR to the chances of a white Christmas
YAY MEDIA AS / ALAMY
I
joined the press office at bookies William Hill in the mid-1970s with one brief: ‘Get us as much publicity as possible – outside horse racing.’ My long-term strategy was to target the time of year when the newspapers, television and radio had their largest audiences of the year – Christmas. I’d do it by offering bets about the major talking points of the festive seasons, things that got people talking and the media speculating. Would there be a white Christmas? If not, would it rain? What would be the most-watched TV programme on Christmas Day? Who would have the year’s biggest Christmas chart hit? I specified that the Christmas Number One single would be the record that topped the chart used by the BBC on 25th December. A contract with the Met Office enabled me to offer odds on snow falling at any time of day in any of a dozen or so major cities. Previously the only bet available was that it would actually be snowing at noon, and bets were lost if inches of snow fell but had stopped by midday. The annual ‘Will it snow on Christmas Day?’ cliffhanger saw me sharing turkey and the trimmings with a TV crew who came to my home to film the scene if snow fell on me on the big day. It didn’t. I was woken up at 5am one 25th December morning, to be told, ‘This is the Press Association news desk. Do you know it’s snowing in Hyde Park?’ These festive flutters rapidly proved astonishingly popular. Any number of amateur meteorologists rushed to back their predictions. One year, I was on the roof of the London Weather Centre with a certain Piers Corbyn, who had begun a meteorological-prediction company in competition with the Met Office and
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staked bets with me to back up his predictions. I have to say he was surprisingly successful. I took Christmas Number One bets from many big names in the music world, not least Simon Cowell. In 1994, he not only staked a significant sum on his act, the Power Rangers, topping the Xmas chart (they didn’t); he also bailed me out by supplying me with the toy figures of the Power Ranger cartoon characters my young son was demanding but which had sold out almost the moment they hit the toy-shop shelves. Take That almost cost me my job. Their single Babe was regarded as a certainty to be the 1993 Christmas Number One and was backed
I’m gambling on a white Christmas: the Met Office provided snow reports for William Hill
In 1993, Mr Blobby squashed Take That to become Christmas Number One
accordingly. My company ended up with a potential six-figure pay-out and my bosses were threatening me with the sack. My only hope of survival was that Take That would be beaten by a purpleand-yellow plastic character championed by Noel Edmonds – Mr Blobby, who had an eponymous record out at the same time. I felt that mums and dads looking for a kid’s stocking-filler present would buy the single in their droves and lift it to the top of the charts.
