Odds-On Interviews with Roy Brindley, Episode 6 - Ed Nicholson, Betting Industry Veteran (Part 1)

ODDS-ON INTERVIEWS WITH ROY BRINDLEY — EPISODE 6 (PART 1)
Ed Nicholson, betting industry veteran
Recorded Thursday 15 October 2026 | Host: Roy Brindley | bestbettingsites.co.uk

Roy: Hello, welcome to the Odds-On podcast, brought to you by bestbettingsites.co.uk. My name’s Roy, delighted to be joined by an industry stalwart. Ed Nicholson. Ed, welcome to the Odds-On podcast.

Ed: Hi Roy, great to be with you.

Roy: Right, I don’t know where to start because… Like myself, we’re a bit of a fossil in the gambling game. First off, just tell our viewers, and it might be easier to say who you haven’t worked for, but… What companies have you worked for in the gambling industry during your last what 25, 30 years

Ed: Yes, it’s almost 35 years actually, but… There are only three salaried companies that I’ve ever worked for. I started in Ladbrokes and then moved to 888 And then to Unibet. So they’re the only three. Kind of salary jobs I’ve had over 35 years. When I left Ladbrokes, I went to City Index for a little while And then I set up my own PR company, so I did work with quite a few betting companies after that in my capacity of… Of the PR company called Applause PR, within them I worked for Betfair. That was interesting. That was right at the beginning of Betfair. I was their only marketing expense at the time. I remember Mark Davies telling me Did I want shares or did I want paying? And I said, I need paying, and about 10 years later I met Mark, he said I would have been a multi-millionaire if I’d taken the if I’d taken the shares. But yeah, they couldn’t afford that any marketing cost at the time. And then I worked for the Daily Star and produced Star Bets which meant I worked with lots of other betting companies over the years. And during that time

Roy: Ouch. Ouch.

Ed: I also did a stint on Sky Sports Racing, at the time called At The Races. It was a brand new… Racing channel, I was on the very first show with Mike Cattermole and over, And Angus McNae. We were in the studio and over at Ascot the great late John McCririck was hosting it from Ascot. So yeah, great days and as I say I’ve been with Unibet for the last 14 years And Went from a marketing, general marketing role. We launched Unibet in the UK in 2013, and over the last five or six years, just been looking after the racing side of things at Unibet.

Roy: Well You’ve definitely left one company out, because researching, I had a talking to you I found a, and you’ve done this before, because I found a video of yourself with 888 16 years ago. Doing a sort of podcasty type deal

Ed: Yeah, yeah, no, I mentioned 888. They were my… There were one of three that I was salaried for and We did an 888 sports show every, it, That was quite crazy, because we had… Back then, it wasn’t so quick at recording. And I mean, everyone does a podcast now and it’s really easy, But back then, we had to get a production company involved. And we had to do it at seven o’clock in the morning on Friday so we could get it all done, edited, ready for the newsletter that went out by email at two o’clock, three o’clock on Friday afternoon. So we’d turn up in an Islington production studio. Having had a coffee and being got up at half past five in the morning to start it at seven o’clock. Steve Claridge was the regular expert, and We had some great guests there. Geoff Norcott, who’s now one of the big comedian stars of television. He was the presenter. Before he was famous, and we used to have great guests on the show. Shane Warne was an 888 ambassador, so I remember him coming on the show and talking about the Ashes and We then went off and had had a drink with him. And yeah really good memories but they yeah they were a long time ago. You did well there, Roy. Yeah That was a long time ago.

Roy: Yeah, we did a thing kind of together where we did a Poker Ashes. I don’t know if you recall this, but we got all the top. Top cricketers from Australian team.

Ed: Yeah, that was a really that’s a good that’s a good memory. I’d forgotten about that because we did the Poker Ashes between mostly England and Australia. The English team, we had… Past Ashes Legends. And the Australian team was obviously captained by Shane Warne, But we had that in the Landmark hotel in central London. I must tell you a story because While we were there, we were filming. I was in the background. I wasn’t involved in kind of filming, being on set, but I was looking after the marketing of it all and I went to have a coffee in the Landmark And I saw Thierry Henry. And then 10 minutes later. I saw… Sachin Tendulkar And then I went in and saw Shane Warne. So within half an hour… I saw three of the biggest sporting legends the planet has ever produced in one era. I didn’t have my camera, I didn’t take a picture. So I haven’t got a record of it, but I don’t think I’ll ever. I’ll never beat that again. Three of the greatest sportsmen ever in the same place within half an hour.

Roy: Yeah, but you’ve done your own fair share of TV. I remember You appearing on Big Brother, doing the odds, doing like a John McCririck style, what’s the latest betting movers… And I mean, how did that come around and what’s your memories of working on Big Brother?

Ed: Well, I loved that time. It was… It was, it’s really interesting to talk about it on a kind of podcast like this, because people who are in the sport now and there are lots of people that do TV and lots of people that do their own kind of Media. They won’t really understand how difficult it was back in the day when there were only four channels, and then some kind of satellite and cable had had just started. And I… My job was at Ladbrokes As a PR spokesman, I was a spokesperson of the PR manager so it’s the same sort of role to many people but it is very different. Being a PR manager is like being a PR manager for any kind of blue chip company. And then because I kind of knew about sport and betting and… And racing and gambling I was also put forward as a spokesperson my job was to try to get betting talked about and in everyday situations. And then my next step was to get Ladbrokes mentioned in that area. So it’s gone full circle now and not many kind of TV companies want to even talk about gambling, or let alone have a betting expert on the show. But back then it was a really good way, it was a brilliant barometer of showing public opinion by having odds on the show in a very succinct and easy way. So it all started with me being on Big Breakfast and I used to be the Big Breakfast betting expert, and whenever they had like a An area where betting could be talked about, they would phone me up and I’d go to Johnny Vaughan. In fact, the first ever time I went on Big Breakfast. I must have looked a right idiot, because I thought, well, this is it. I’m going to have to. I knew what Big Breakfast was like, but I bought myself a Hugo Boss suit and turned up in my best tucker. And Johnny Vaughan and Denise van Outen were in their jeans and T-shirts. And Johnny did take the mickey out of me, turning up with a Hugo Boss suit. But I kind of dressed down after that. And we had some really good, good events. We had… And Because of that, we then… Got to know the production company, and then when Big Brother came on they had some screen tests for betting expert, for betting people. And I know all the big guys from the big companies, William Hill, Corals, they were, they went and I went along and because they knew me, I think I got the gig because of that. And I was on the first series. And It was great because you’d turn up and you’d be kind of looked after, but then you were put onto the scene just as the guest, the first the evictee had been taken out of the house, And he’d be sitting on the sofa, Or she would be sitting on the sofa, And they’ll be talking to Davina McCall. And every now and again, you kind of look at them and they’re looking at me. They’re thinking, Who the hell is this guy? I’ve just, I’ve been in the house for six weeks. And I suddenly turned out and Davina McCall I know. And there’s this bald guy, who’s sitting on the corner, who, should I know him? And it was quite I loved that kind of look of I should know him but I shouldn’t. And then I was there as a filler really so the last five minutes of the show if they had two minutes to fill I would talk for two minutes if they had 30 seconds, I would talk for 30 seconds and it would just be purely about the betting. So If someone was evicted, it would be, you know. Who’s going to win it now and what’s the betting on the next eviction? And Sometimes I’ll be on for 30 seconds, sometimes I’ll stay for… For a little bit longer. And then because of that, we did Big Brother’s Little Brother which was actually that was the That was a bigger gig because that was I was on every two or three weeks On Channel 4. And that was really good because we could talk about the betting and we did loads of kind of interesting activities. And I remember being on the show one week And I had to share the first, So I had two halves, It was a half an hour program, and you did, you know, the first part there were two guests And then there were another two guests in the second half. So I would invariably be on the second half. I’d be sitting next to somebody that I would know, you know, it’d be a psychologist who would look at the body behavior and would tell the viewers what they thought was going to happen next week or it would be a you know celebrity talking about and their love of Big Brother. Famously, John McCririck did it for a long time after me. And I remember one week I was sitting next to this guy, didn’t have a clue who he was, I knew his partner because she was commissioning editor At Channel 4. So I knew her from the media. But I sat next to this guy; apparently he was a comedian. Apparently he just… Won a been at the Edinburgh Fringe and won some sort of rose is it a rose you win or something that And he was about to have a new series That was going to hit the TV on BBC Two. It was Ricky Gervais and they were talking about The Office. I didn’t have a clue who he was and No one knew who he was, really, because that was his first, I think, TV appearance. So I really want to get that. I haven’t got that on any kind of… Video or anything. So if anyone knows how I can get that I’d love to get that back to see what it looked like, me sitting next to Ricky Gervais talking about The Office. And That was that. Yeah. So every kind of two or three weeks we did that. And I really enjoyed that. That was really good fun. I Met some really, Really good people. They, At the end of the first series, all the guests were invited to an awards ceremony. So we all went into the Big Brother house. And I always remember Tara Palmer-Tomkinson I think she was who was kind of a celebrity babysitter for the royals and was always out on the… On the razzle in London. She came up to me and liked my shirt And said, oh, my brother’s got a shirt like that. And I didn’t want to tell her that mine was from Marks & Spencers because I’m sure her brother’s was… From some very posh place, but yeah, it was a really good experience for someone that was just in their kind of late twenties, early thirties. I really enjoyed it.

Roy: Did you not meet Dermot O’Leary at the same time?

Ed: Yeah, no, mean I became quite good friends with Dermot for a little while because obviously every couple of weeks I was there. We had a big barbecue at the end of the show as well, at the end of the series and I got to talk to him then. And he loved racing. He’s obviously Irish, His dad’s Irish. And a few years later The Racing Post very kindly invited me to Cheltenham. And in the box was Dermot O’Leary. And his dad was there. And his dad knew who I was, which is amazing because he loved racing and he knew that we were the and the betting company that that were promoting and the betting on Big Brother. And so they asked me for a tip, And I gave them a tip in the last race thinking, well, it’s the last race. They might not even be here. So if it loses… I’d probably get away with it. And I gave them a horse called Hunt Ball, And it won And I thought they weren’t there. It was a favourite, about six to one favourite for a big handicap. Maybe it was a Mildmay of Flete, and I remember standing there talking to the managing director of Racing Post And suddenly feeling that something on my back. Dermot O’Leary had jumped on my back and started riding the finish out to the race to say thank you to me. And it was the most bizarre moment because there was I trying to act all… Mature and businesslike And Dermot O’Leary was on my back riding the last half furlong of the Cheltenham Mildmay of Flete. So, yeah, it was I got to know him. I obviously don’t know him now and I did meet him several… Years later at Goodwood when we sponsored the The Goodwood Festival, the Qatar Goodwood Festival, the betting expert. And I went up to him and just said, do did you remember me? And he goes, yeah, actually, my dad’s here. Do you want to come and meet my dad again? So we went upstairs into a… A restaurant and I had another kind of half an hour and a cup of tea with his dad Remembering the day. So Yeah, good memories and that’s the thing about the sport and about betting. You do You meet a lot of good people in such a different… Different society areas and society areas. And it’s always and there’s always like racing brings everyone together doesn’t it and that happened then and I’m sure I’ll meet people on the racecourse in the future as well and we’ll kind of think back to those times 20 years ago.

Roy: I’m loving these stories. I think we’ll make this into a two-parter, shall we, I think we? I love talking about the past. And maybe part two, we’ll look at what you’re doing now because you are at Unibet and that means you’re heavily involved in Horse racing, the Champion Hurdle etc, so let’s put that to one side for now Another name I’m going to throw out there, I know you had some dealings with, and I think that might have led to a chance encounter with… Princess Diana, possibly. Jarvis Astaire, the famous boxing promoter who ended up heavily involved in greyhound racing. Frank Bruno’s manager back in the day, what’s your recollections how did that come around and is it true you met Princess Diana?

Ed: Well, we yeah, we a lot of things that… That were that happened over the years at these big events that… That Jarvis Astaire, Jarvis Astaire was an amazing man. He, as you know from your days with greyhounds, he was a… He was chairman of Wembley Stadium, not just for the greyhounds, but obviously for the football and the venue, the great sports venue in North London. And he had met so many… Famous people over the years. And He was getting towards the end of his… Kind of work career he was still yeah late 70s early 80s but he still wanted to be involved and he is very much a person that he kind of his word is what goes, you know, so we. I work with him and a guy called Geoffrey Thomas, who… Was at the time or just slightly before the British Greyhound Racing Board’s chief executive and I got to know him through that, and then he started to do work for Jarvis when he left the greyhound world. And they worked with the Daily Star and they produced this Pull-out every, to begin with, every Monday And then it became every Saturday called the Daily Star, Star Bets. And we would talk to betting… We’ve talked to betting companies. We’d get them to sponsor columns. So Alan Brazil had a column, Andy Townsend had a column At one stage, we used to get jockeys. Mick Fitzgerald, I think, had a column. Johnny Hobbs was the columnist for greyhound racing. And we had lots of experts over the years do these columns. One on greyhounds, one on football, one on racing. Carl Llewellyn did it for about a year-and-a-half. I used to ghostwrite for… For Carl Llewellyn and Andy Townsend. And it was all it all came from Jarvis Astaire’s idea. With Desmond at the… At the Star. And we produced that for maybe five or six years. And it all kind of worked really well but every Monday morning we’d have a we had when it went to Saturday we had a production meeting in Jarvis’s Marble Arch million pound flat. And you walk in. And you go into his… His study And you would see all these pictures of famous people. He famously brought Muhammad Ali over to the UK. And if you listen to an interview with Parkinson, you can hear Jarvis Astaire in the background heckling Michael Parkinson to ask him a question. And he had all these pictures of the royalty, he was He tried to be a film star for a little while in Hollywood. He knew Lester Piggott very well. He knew that The royal family, as you say, Princess Diana was, I think, a meant was a trust that he was on with the charity. And yeah we would meet every week and you know he would tell, He would tell the same story quite often because he was getting to that age. But they were amazing stories and I really enjoyed those times as well. When I was working for Ladbrokes as the greyhound PR, I would be on Sky Sports Racing as the betting expert. And quite regularly, he would be… Pointing at me and talking to Jeff and myself, Jeff Stelling who presented it, trying to make a point. I don’t know whether he realised we were live on camera but all you could hear is him telling us to say something on camera about dog racing. About, Wimbledon about his business interests, and it was very off-putting. But he was a an old school raconteur and an entrepreneur, and then I really enjoyed Working with him. You’d sit back and just listen to him tell the stories. He was an amazing character. And through him, I met a lot of good people and a lot of… And further stories I’m sure we’ll talk about them today but yeah that that was another good time, that that was in early 2000s I remember those days really well.

Roy: It’s great reminiscing with you, Ed. As your role as a PR man in the gambling industry, You made reference before about World’s a bit different now. Everyone’s doing podcasts, et cetera I mean, It does strike me that… I don’t see those roles advertised anymore. And I can’t really pinpoint a guy that does… There was Wally Pyrah, Was in the same line as, as you know, A PR man for a bookmaking firm who makes those appearances on TV shows and whatever.

Ed: Yeah.

Roy: Gambling’s considered politically incorrect right now, even though it’s gambling firms that sponsor so many TV shows and events. That’s ironic. Are those days ever going to come back? Will there ever be a… Even though to John McCririck. Yeah, we’ve got Matt Chapman now. Matt, Matt Had one episode on Dancing on Ice and that’s it. He’s now back as a racing man, McCririck branched off in every different direction, I mean Things progress, things move on. Are we ever going to see the likes again? Is it just a different world these days?

Ed: I think it’s a different world. I don’t think you’re… I don’t think the production… Companies want to go to that area. They’re very much… Kind of more celebrity and getting an endorsement through someone that can maximise their show, maybe through their own social media. And The betting, although it is a brilliant barometer of public opinion, it’s becoming less and less used. You do occasionally get some political… Comment, And I did that when I was at Ladbrokes. I was there for eight years and… One or two of those years linked around the election. And you do still hear quite a few journalists and media talk about the betting on something to happen. But they don’t, like they invariably get it wrong. They don’t really under… Understand it. And so you need someone to talk about and they, You’re quite right, they don’t use the… Spokesperson they talk about the betting themselves. So I don’t think it’s going to come back unless it’s a, I mean, even racing. You know, we don’t really… Matt Chapman does talk about the betting, but… There’s nobody from bookmakers on The racing shows, and it used to happen all the time. We might have people watching this saying, well, why should you be on, on the TV? Why should the bookmaker reps be on? But I would say added colour And, you know, some of the people that, well, a lot of the people that watch the racing want to know what’s been back. They want to know where the betting’s been. And that’s why John McCririck made a name for himself because He would tell everybody what happened in the morning, what happened in the afternoon, where the money had gone. And although they occasionally do it. Through Matt Chapman on ITV, You don’t see any other bookmaker talk about betting. You get one or two… On-course bookmakers you get one or two interviews with punters that have done well. And you do talk about the politics of. Of the industry. But you don’t get anyone talking about where the big bets were laid or where the money’s gone. And I think that’s just because. The times have moved and I mean, the funny thing is that ITV Racing is funded by the bookmakers. Without the bookmakers’ money, there would be no ITV Racing. I think that’s well known. But, You know, they pay for the sponsorship, the advertising. And a lot of people think it’s the goodness of ITV covering racing. It wouldn’t cover racing if it couldn’t commercially wash its face or make money. And then you know, the bookmakers support help do that.

Roy: Yeah probably ironically the most publicity that gambling’s had in recent times is when some MPs decided to place a bet on the forthcoming election, which was really ironic. Just striking me as well. Ladbrokes, were you there? Two events really. Frankie’s Day and the void Grand National.

Ed: Yeah. Yeah Yeah, both of those events, and they were… Amazing events for different reasons. I… I, myself and Simon Clare started the same day. Simon Clare obviously worked for Ladbrokes, Corals, Entain and we started in PR on the same day. In 1993. He was there nine months and then went to Coral. I stayed another eight years at Ladbrokes. We looked after much of the PR. So whether it was racing Novelty betting, sports betting, politics, the greyhounds. I did a lot of politics of racing And I did the novelty sports. But then every weekend, one of us would have to be on call. And. It was my turn to be on call. When Frankie rode his seven timer and I remember it very well. I was living in Bicester and I went to Oxford with my partner. And I kind of, I’m a bit like you, Roy, I think You would have done this. Every race, I popped into a bookmaker’s on the high street just to check how it was going. And the first race was one bookmaker. And I saw Frankie rode the first winner. Then went to the… I went shopping for a little while and popped into another bookmaker an hour later, saw he’d had three winners. And when it got to five winners, I thought I’ve got to get back. So I got back home And just waited for the seventh winner to come in. And then the phones just went mad. I mean, well, the phones went mad after the sixth, actually. And then the phones went absolutely bonkers. Mike Dillon was on course. And he got a lot of the… The journalists on course so he did a lot of work there But I was getting called by a lot of the… Mainstream media. Wanting to know what the damage was. And And at the stage we had no real idea but in the betting world, for those people that haven’t worked in bookmakers, we used to have a bet acceptance centre, which is where all the shops would phone up their running on bets. So you get an idea of the liability. So we did understand where we were, and hence why Fujiyama Crest went off at 2/1 and not 20/1, as his early price was at the time. And But then it got serious. The next day, we got to hear about all these bets. And I turned up on Monday, in the PR at eight o’clock in the morning, and the bet acceptance team had been to our office And stuck a load of… My, So our job was to try and get publicity from it now it’s happened, it’s done, try and get publicity. So we took a region each. My region was… On the east side of the country, including Newmarket, and I turned up at my desk, and I’m not joking, a pile of wafer thin Receipts telling about the bets were up to here on my desk. And there was another one on the floor. And my job was to go through them and just check to see if there was any potential PR lines. And I remember there was one 85-year-old woman in Newmarket who’d had a 10p each way accumulator And she won, I think it was 2,500 odd to one, wasn’t it? And she’d won that money and We went and did some publicity and it got a great deal of coverage. And, you know, we were just thinking, you know, good on you because these people were just backing. Frankie blind They didn’t know what he was riding, really. And they didn’t know certainly know what return. And a lot of these people were just betting. 10ps, 20ps, 30ps, 50p, Heinz, you know Through the card and they would be with their normal Saturday bet. And… They will. Yeah the big winners were… Dealt with by Mike Dillon at Ascot on the photo opportunities that came. Famously one guy won Over half a million, I think it was nearly a million actually, when and he, it is he was his anniversary. They’d gone to Dover Street Wine Bar the night before, stayed in a posh hotel And then their idea was that they were going to go to Ascot and then go and… Take in a show in the evening. And his wife said I don’t fancy going actually you go and I’ll see you later on and we’ll go will go to the show. And he said, just as a throwaway line, what you want me to do? And she said, just back Frankie in every race. So he did a bet on Frankie in every race, on with Ladbrokes, and famously took the full million. So every year or every anniversary He was always the guy that came out to do the publicity with Mike Dillon at Ascot. But that that was that that was great because it was a small, mostly that was a big customer, that or a big staking customer, but mostly they were small staking customers. And it was, you know, as a punter to myself, it was great to see Those kind of customers win that amount of money. And the other occasion you mentioned was the void National. And again I was PR manager on call that day in the office. With all the team. All the team at Ladbrokes worked either in the shops or came if they were needed in the head office, so we had a MD, Chris Bell; we had our head of customer services, Dick Pinninger, customer relations, so that was telephone betting and customer relations and everything we had, the studio man there, and we’d all set we’d all settled with a We’ve been doing all work all morning lots of you know PR stories and Lots of people phoning in the telephone, betting in the trading centre. Very, very busy time. And then we always would get kind of 12 pizzas in the boardroom and watch the race. So we bought the pizzas in the boardroom and suddenly we realized it’s going to be a void race. And what I remember mostly, it was like a management team meeting it or a you know the way days you go to try to become better managers we kind of sat there got the pizzas off the table and Chris Bell said, “Right, I want in 30 seconds telling us what the issues are and how you’re going to solve them.” And he went around the table and within five minutes we had a plan. And we were on the phone to Mike, who was at… Aintree, we for the first and only time our MD went into the studio and actually made the announcements to staff Via the voice network, I mean which would all the customers would have heard, but that was the easiest way to explain what to do. So he went on and explained what was needed And then we obviously had to work out. Because we didn’t know what was going on. Was the race going to be re-run or not? And It was a kind of half an hour to an hour of intense… Decision-making. And it taught me a lot. I learned a lot on that day about how to deal with pressure Well, certainly I looked at someone who dealt with pressure very well. And that was an amazing day at Ladbrokes too.

Roy: More folklore. Gambling. Got to talk Tony Bloom because he seems… I don’t know almost like have a folklore type aura about him right now I think people Like a mystique, I mean, Tony doesn’t… Excuse me give that many interviews etc no one really knows what he does Lots of people question how’s he got these millions potentially billions in the bank through gambling. How did that happen? And he’s a UK resident and his bets are coming from the Far East. But you worked for the guy, tell us those experiences, what you did there and how you found him.

Ed: Well, I worked with him for a little while, about 18 months, and my job was specifically to… Launch and market his betting company which is called Premierbet. And he worked that worked alongside his… His Starlizard proprietary Betting company. And so my job was, and he was a bit unlucky actually with, with he sold his business. He did what he wanted with it and in two years. But he was bringing Asian handicap betting and unders and overs to the UK market. Just at the same time as Betfair were launching or just getting a bit, getting bigger. I was working for Betfair, as I say, launched them. But then I also was asked to help launch and market Premierbet. And so I could see both at the same time. And it was just unlucky that, because obviously on Betfair, the exchange, so obviously punters here will know this, but for those that don’t Betting and odds this, it doesn’t… Okay. The betting odds don’t really matter, it’s the margins of the book that matter most to a professional gambler. If you’re betting on something that’s got lower margin, theoretically… You’ll make more or lose less. So. Traditionally in betting The 1X2 coupon, which is home away draw was around 110%. So they’ve got a 10% margin. And there was nobody coming in to kind of take that market on. Internet had just started it’s about maybe three years old betting and it that was reducing the margin a little bit, but not too much. And then Tony, who had worked for… Victor Chandler on Asian markets and understood how they worked. He brought it over to the UK and That took out the draw Of the 1X2. So, immediately there was less margin because you’re not talking about three eventualities, you’re talking about two eventualities but also the margin was much smaller so it’s typically two percent And or, even one-and-a-half to three percent of the time maybe, but And the same with unders and overs. So Obviously, you can’t have two and a half goals. Regularly bettors would say, you know, under two, exactly two or more than two. And that will be again three options and so you’d have three bits of margin. But what he did was under and over two and a half. It wasn’t his idea. Obviously, that was what they were doing in Asia, but he brought it over. And it just so happened it was at a time when Betfair started to market. And they just started to promote. And their margins were obviously even smaller than that because it was an exchange and people were betting against people. So he was a bit unlucky it came at the same time, but he was really behind it and we marketed it and we… We had big events at The Brewery in London. I remember with all the city traders, we organised that. We had about 500 people turn up, We had a charity auction. Jeff Stelling was the host. And we got a lot of accounts open through that. And I guess I got to know him quite well at that time. And I remember going in for an interview with him and his second in, well he’s first in charge of a guy called Graham Doyle, who me and Graham ended up having horses together, and he was, you know, he’d worked with, I think, Tony at BetVictor or Victor Chandler. And I was having an interview with… With Graham, I’d met Tony at an event and Tony said come in for an interview And I thought I was going to have it with Tony, but he wasn’t there. And halfway through, Tony turned up and just… Basically got up on the… Got up on the… Table and was just eating a bowl of Frosties looking at me. And I’m thinking, and he was obviously looking at me like he looks at poker players and just trying to work me out and At the end of the day, Graham… Kindly and thought I could do a job And offered me the job. And so I got to know him but got to know him quite well. Went a couple of times to see Brighton play when he wasn’t the chairman, but he was involved in the… In the end In the board. In fact, when we had a board meeting for Premierbet we had to stop it halfway through because Dick Knight who was I think the chairman of Brighton at the time. He was obviously on it was not obviously but he was he will he was on the board of Premierbet and they were selling a player. Or to West Ham. I think it was West Ham. And we had to stop the boardroom meeting for him to go out and have a discussion to what I’d imagine would be to clarify and confirm the price. I think it was Bobby Zamora. Maybe it was Spurs. But it was I just remember thinking this is a different world you know. Literally one minute we’re talking about adverts in the Racing Post over the next 12 months And then they’re doing a deal for a Premier League footballer. But yeah, once again, he is… He is he’s a really decent bloke and he’s obviously very intelligent. He’s done an exceptional job. And at the time, Premierbet were based in… North Finchley and we And there must have only been about 12 people working in the office. And within those 12, there were two, two subsequent chairmen of Premier League football teams. Tony Bloom, Brighton, and Matthew Benham of Brentford, so just from a small little room in North Finchley that within 20 years, maybe within 10, they were… Two Premier League Chairman or owners of clubs. So yeah that, They were interesting times as well.

Roy: Now, I’ve read Harry Findlay’s book, and it turns out that Harry Findlay, the renowned gambler and part owner of Denman and a lot of other horses and greyhounds Basically did his schooling with Tony Bloom. Have you come across Findlay much yourself as a punter and as a character?

Ed: Yeah, yeah, I’ve A couple of stories about Harry. This, This is turning into a stories moment. But I first met Harry at Catford. I mentioned earlier on, you know, Roy, but I used to look after all the dogs, PR, marketing for Ladbrokes and then the politics, Which is how I got to know Graham, Geoffrey Thomas, we’ll be sitting on the other side of the fence at that time. But So I’d quite often go out with the greyhound boys and I’d own dogs at Walthamstow and Wimbledon. I’ve had about 17 greyhounds in my life, and First thing I ever did when I left university was save money to buy a greyhound and it ran at Walthamstow with Dickie Hawks. So anyway, this was at Catford. And… I turned up to be with the to be with the lads. I didn’t get there ’till late And the last race was just being run and we’re going to go out afterwards. Maybe it was third last race. And I met Harry And we literally, I had a bet, in the bar after the last race, on which trickle of rain would get to the bottom of the pane the quickest. And that was my first interaction with Harry, and then He worked with Tony, as you say. I got to know him quite well. And Tony every year had, I think he still does It, has a race in name of his Of his grandfather at Brighton, Harry Bloom Memorial. It used to be a five-and-a-half race furlong race and he used to try to win it with a horses were trained by Dandy Nicholls at the time. And so we’d all turn up but everyone that worked with Tony would get we get invited and we turn up and watch the race and one of our other good friends Phil Partridge, who I used to work at Ladbrokes with and then got to know Tony. He, at this… Particular occasion on this one time he had a box With a lot of his family and friends. So it was a bit of banter during the day. And We all decided to have a race at the end of the day, the last half a furlong at Brighton. And in Phil’s… Camp there were several young footballers who have… Sons of Fathers he knew. And there was, I remember there was one guy, he looked incredibly fit and he was apparently, he was a Chelsea under 16 Hero to come. And he was going to run, and then our box put up four or five people and I turned to the guy that I was with and I said, I fancy myself here because I used to be a bit of a runner. I used to, I went to Loughborough, and I used to run 100 in 10.9. I mean, I’m about 30-something now, so I’m nowhere near as fit enough to run 10.9, but I was still okay. And I was and Harry had done a book on it. So Harry had priced up and he put me at 20/1. And I thought, well, I’m not a 20/1 shot. I’m probably, you know I won’t beat this guy from Chelsea, He looks fit. But I’m probably less than 10/1, Probably less than 5/1. So I turned to my good friend, Mark McGuinness, who worked with me at Premierbet, and I suggested, how I said, how much money you got left? And we had a particularly bad day punting. I think we had about 20 quid between us left. So we put, I said, put the full 20 on. So we put 20 quid on myself. I turned up just to try and get a bit better as I kept my suit on. And my shirt and my tie on and my shoes on. Had a bit of a belly balding head, I thought I might get 25s if I don’t look that good. Meanwhile, the Chelsea player… Stripped to his boxers and was ripped. And I think he went into about 6/4, And I won, And we won 400 quid. And afterwards, I told Harry about my past being, you know, quite quick, and he And I thought he’d go mad. I thought he would say, you know, you’ve done me there. But he said, Ed, he goes, Ed, “Why didn’t you tell me? We could have had it right off. I could have offered 16/1 on the boy!” And so I got to know him through that. And then I saw him a few times later. I haven’t seen him for a long time. But… Some we all went on a cruise once, with Tony and everyone that worked for Premierbet and Harry was on and every night Harry would be talking about his… His gambling exploits. And they would be four deep at the bar listening to him. He’s quite a raconteur when he gets going, and he’s got some amazing stories. So So yeah, it’s a… I haven’t seen him for a long time, but… Harry certainly is a good memory Harry meeting Harry is certainly a good memory for me.

Roy: Yeah, I read his book. I was quite surprised early on this reference to golf. Do you remember the… Hole-in-one deal? And I’ve got that book as well, which I thought was absolutely fantastic.

Ed: Yep.

Roy: Maybe you can tell the story better than I can. But yeah, what’s your experiences with golf then?

Ed: Well… We… I’m not… I’ve only had two bets on golf in my life, and I don’t really follow it. But the hole-in-one thing was quite This was it’s all about Perceived value and perceived odds. Now, if you say what’s the chance of getting a hole in one? Everybody thinks, well, this is… It’s impossible. You know you don’t There’s 150 players in a golf tournament and invariably… You know, if you think that you’re going to get a hole in one, it’s got to be a 100/1. But the odds on someone, anyone, getting a hole in one… Is obviously 5/4, 6/4, something like that, I think. So in a tournament, anyone getting a hole-in-one, but you getting a hole-in-one is obviously… But there’s so many people playing in a tournament that… Obviously the maths work out. And This group of individuals famously worked this out. Yeah. Bookmakers, the smaller bookmakers, independent bookmakers more so than the big corporate companies, probably thought the same way, and they’d offer between 50/1 and 100/1. So, apparently, they went around the country, there’s been a book written about it, they went around the country Putting on 10, 20, 50 quids with all these small independents on there being a hole-in-one at these tournaments every week. And obviously getting 100/1, 50/1 when the real odds were closer to evens as I understand, So yeah, and funnily enough, We I talked about Big Breakfast earlier on. There was a there was a fellow that phoned me on… So back in the day, again, this was before the internet, believe it or not, we used to get… People writing in asking for things to happen and we’d give them odds. And we basically worked that out at Ladbrokes, whether we thought we were going to get publicity or not. And I would either talk to the betting experts, the odds compilers, of which there were just two, who did every single sport. There was racing, there was football, But there were just two odds compilers for every other sport, which is… Insane now when you think about it. And Or I’d make the odds myself, or would there be combination of the two. And… This fella phoned me up on this occasion and said, I’m from a local newspaper in East Anglia and I’ve… One of my readers has just contacted me and said that he’s a 60-year-old man he’d gone to Spain. He’s been playing golf all his life, never had a hole-in-one, and he got a hole-in-one. And his mate was congratulating him, who’s also never had a hole-in-one, And he teed off and got a hole-in-one on the very next shot. So two of them, two holes in one, consecutive shots. And they wanted me to give odds for kind of, as I said earlier on, it’s a brilliant barometer for the public to say what the odds were. But apparently he’d already phoned Corals. He’d already phoned William Hill, And but both their press officers have said, look, we can’t work out the odds. Obviously, you can’t work out this. You’ve got no idea how good the players are, You don’t know what the par is, You don’t know how good the course is. So you can’t give any odds, really. But I was keen to get a line for Ladbrokes. So I just said, hang on a minute, “I’ve just tried working out the odds, and I’ve broken the calculator!” or something like that. And he said, I will use that. And he used it. Went in the local paper. The next day, it was page three of The Sun. And they had obviously not the main part of the page three of The Sun.

Roy: You sure it’s page three? Are you sure it’s page three?

Ed: Yeah, but the Yeah, but the bit next to it. And But they did they got the guys who had… Who had had the experience and pictured on the screen on the page And it was a story. The day after that, it was on The Big Breakfast. And everybody that came to have a bet. To speak to Johnny Vaughan that day, they would take him outside to the garden and they’d made this makeshift… Golf course up and it wasn’t really it was a you know 50-yard pitch and putt. And I would be there, and I had to give odds on every celebrity getting a hole-in-one. Now, obviously, Nobody was going to bet on it was just a case of kind of bringing the stories all together. So I was on you know I was on there all day, I thought I’d done a marvelous job getting Ladbrokes PR and I turned up at Rayners Lane, It’s a great big, which is the Ladbrokes headquarters. About half past nine, having been there all day maybe 10 o’clock being there all morning. And Those of you that were watching this have been at Ladbrokes in Rayners Lane. It’s a spirally kind of five floor staircase. And if you’re at the top and you lean over, you can see who’s down the bottom. And I thought I was going to be the hero, having been on the show for two hours talking about Ladbrokes and betting. But I turned up and Colin Miles, who was a trading director, kind of looked down at me and he said, “Oi, you, here, come up”. So I had to go up in his office and he said, what were you doing? And I said, well I was just trying to get publicity. He goes, Yeah, but the trouble is we’ve had everybody on the call centre phoning up, trying to back themselves to get a hole-in-one at their municipal golf course at the weekend. And I said, well what’s wrong with that? It’s good PR. He goes, well, we can’t give them any odds, can we? And also, it’s the Newmarket July meeting And I haven’t been able to take any bets on the Newmarket July meeting because my call operatives have been… Stuck with guys wanting to bet themselves to get a hole-in-one. So I learned a lesson there as well, that you kind of have to think about the whole rather than just the… Because you get it the whole rather than just the

Roy: Very good.

Ed: Just the you know Just the bit you’re involved in.

Roy: You’ve clearly enjoyed your… 30 years as a bookmaker PR man. Any advice? You know we discussed it, Maybe that line of work is diminishing now, but there’s still plenty of jobs in the bookmaking industry. I think once upon a time, you would get a job in a shop and then you build your way up or you’d be in the call centre.

Ed: Yep.

Roy: Shops are vanishing. Call centres are a thing of the past. I mean how does a young person with an interest in gambling that wants to get involved go about it these days?

Ed: Good question. I think… Traditionally, as you say, people have come up from the shops. Mike Dillon famously was… A guy that used to write the prices on the boards before it got digitised, and he worked his way up. I still think there’s opportunity to do that, but I also think people that love racing and betting… Are less likely to work in shops these days. They don’t seem to be as… A breeding ground as it used to be for kind of the, the racing career, the betting career, they’re a means to an end to do a job, to get paid and to move on. I think in the world of social media, that’s the way that it should be done. And that’s the way that it has been done. I speak to lots of people that that kind of have their own podcasts or their own shows and talk about betting, and or they’re looking to come on to other people’s shows as experts or as offering advice. So I think the new generation Are so much better at presenting and themselves on screen, which obviously is where we are at now, rather than media and old media and print. And I think that’s naturally lends itself to kind of PR and You know, maybe the celebrity status that that so many youngsters seem to want these days. But the influencer angle is probably the way to go. If you’re looking to do that; If you’re looking at racing, there are plenty of jobs still available But it is getting harder, so working on a race course in the marketing department of, I’ve been working with people recently at Chester and Chepstow and they’ve gone on to work in the media. One of the main journalists for the Racing Mirror team, She was PR at Chepstow about 10 years ago, eight years ago, and she moved up and onwards. So it still does work, but I’d imagine, As Ever, You’ve got to have luck. And you’ve got to be talking to people and trying to open those avenues as best you can. And quite often they’ll get shut in your face but you just gotta to get up and keep going and eventually something will Will open up if you’re I think if you’re persistent enough and you really want it. But you’re right, generally speaking, it is, I mean my job back in the day as a PR spokesman for a bookmaker, You’ve hardly got any of those anymore. You get PR managers and you get people that work in press offices, but you’ve got very few people that… Kind of one of their jobs is to go out into the media and get publicity. I can’t think of… I can’t think of more than two or three at the moment.

Roy: Wow. Ed, I’ve really enjoyed talking about Ed Nicholson’s past. Let’s do a part two. Let’s do present and future. But for now, thank you so much. It’s been great fun reminiscing with you. And we’re going to talk to you again next week.

Ed: Yeah, good fun. Thank you. Thanks, Roy.

Roy: Brilliant. Enjoyed it. Thank you so much, Ed.

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