Britain’s oddest bets

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

Ijoined 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 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 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.

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

She shot JR: Larry Hagman (Dallas’s JR) and Mary Crosby (Kristin Shepard). Right: Screaming Lord Sutch bet he’d become PM

It was a close-run thing, but the Take That camp made a huge error by releasing their single a week too early.

Yes, they blasted up to Number One, as teen fans of the group rushed out to buy the single in their hundreds of thousands, sending it straight into the charts at Number One.

But there was a week to go, during which the stocking-filler effect kicked in big-time. Mr Blobby grabbed the chart-topping position and kept me in a job. Take That’s Robbie Williams got his revenge, though – later staking £1,000 on one of his own singles to reach Number One, which it did.

In 1997, a man from Hertfordshire changed his name by deed poll to Santa Claus and backed himself to top the Christmas charts. He didn’t, but we still lost a fortune as the Spice Girls were backed down from 16/1 to 1/8, costing us £92,000 in the process. We were also lost in a snowdrift of 7/1 bets as the white stuff fell in London, Manchester, Newcastle and Norwich.

I’m not sure anyone much cares what the Christmas Number One is these days – although if you fancy a bet on it this year, I’d have a couple of quid on ABBA with a track from their new LP, Voyage.

The success of offbeat bets led to my taking all manner of previously unheardof wagers. I opened a book in 1980 on the most famous TV series plot line of all – ‘Who shot JR?’ in the hugely popular Dallas series – inspired by my wife Sheila’s fanatical interest in the show.

My boss said, ‘If we lose a fortune, it was your idea, and if we don’t, it was MY idea’

Long shot: Harry Wilson, who played for Wales at 16, won his grandpa £125,000

This was probably the most popular non-sporting betting market ever opened. I got the go-ahead to launch it only after my director boss said, ‘You can do it, but only on the basis that if we lose a fortune, you’re fired because it was your idea, and if we don’t, then it was MY idea.’

We won money when 5/2 second favourite Kristin was revealed to be the shooter. Had it been hotly fancied Sue Ellen, I’d have been on the dole.

I encouraged customers of my company to back themselves in one-off bets, which they did by the hundred, betting they’d live to be a hundred. One gentleman, John Richardson – still alive – will collect half a million pounds from his £50 investment at 10,000/1 if he not only makes it to his century but also manages to father a child – in the conventional manner – at the same age.

In 2000, Pete Edwards bet me £50 at 2,500/1 that his infant grandson, then three years old, would grow up to represent Wales at football at senior international level.

Thirteen years later, Harry Wilson came on in the final few minutes of the Wales–Belgium game, winning Grandad £125,000! One of my then bosses called this ‘a sacking offence’ because of how much I’d cost the company. I showed him an estimate from a PR agency that the publicity from this pay-out would have cost a seven-figure sum to buy.

If politics is your thing, you may fancy betting on who will succeed Boris – Rishi Sunak is at 5/2, with Priti Patel available at 33/1. That reminds me of the time I gave the late leader of the Monster Raving Loony Party, Screaming Lord Sutch, odds of 15,000,000/1 – confirmed by the Guinness Book of Records as the longest odds ever accepted by any bookmaker – to become Prime Minister.

He bet a fiver on himself.