Interview with Heavyweight Bookie Gary Wiltshire

by , 26 March 2025

In 2025, Gary Wiltshire will complete his 50th year as on-course bookmaker. To celebrate, the heavyweight bookie has recently published his second book, Fifty Years In The Betting Jungle. Here, Roy from best betting sites talks to Gary to get his forthright views on bookmaking and the future of racing.

Bookmaker Gary Wiltshire at Taunton racecourse in 2001.

Five years after ‘Frankie Day’ Gary Wiltshire is seen hard at work at a 2001 mid-week Taunton meeting. ©Getty

The Broke Bookie Who Fought Back Is Now 50 Years in the Ring

In 1996, Frankie Dettori famously rode a seven-timer at Ascot. The 25,095/1 accumulator broke the back of high street bookmakers the length and breadth of the British Isles. The industry-wide losses were calculated to be £40 million.

The benefactors were small stakes fun-loving Saturday punters who had placed Yankee, Lucky 15 and similar multiple bets on the reigning champion jockey. One William Hill shop punter collected £550,823.54 after placing a 50p Super Heinz and a £1 each-way accumulator on Dettori’s mounts. His outlay was £67.58.

Not only the major High Street betting firms were hit hard. On-course bookmaker Gary Wiltshire was ruined after laying the seventh winner, Fujiyama Crest, for everything he had and more. His losses totalled £1.4 million.

The Bookie Who Lost His House

In the aftermath, ‘Big Gary’ was forced to sell his house, forfeit his personal fortune and “graft” for four subsequent years to repay his gambling debts – owed to the major betting firms that used him to hedge their liabilities on Fujiyama Crest.

With his honour intact and a good reputation, Gary Wiltshire would go on to work for the BBC and Sky Sports as their betting ring presenter. In 2011, he also penned a book, ‘Winning It Back: The Autobiography of Britain’s Biggest Gambler’.

Now, the self-proclaimed ’Belly from the Telly’ is back with a second entertaining book titled: ‘Fifty Years In The Betting Jungle’ and subtitled ‘Confessions of an on-course Bookie’ which has been co-written with Paul Jones, the author of the Weatherbys Cheltenham Festival Betting Guide between 2000-2015.

From Flaps to Fishing Lakes Warts and All

The new book marks a half-century since Gary started in the betting ring and features a ‘warts and all’ look back at the many eye-popping tales and characters he encountered on his extraordinarily colourful and ongoing journey.

‘Fifty Years In The Betting Jungle’ details Wiltshire’s betting-ring experiences at racecourses, greyhound tracks, point-to-points, flapping tracks, big sports arenas, and even fishing lakes in his distinctive, down-to-earth style.

In addition to 50 years of entertaining betting anecdotes, Wiltshire’s excellent new book also serves as a brutally honest update for readers of his 2011 autobiography on the significant changes in his personal life during the intervening fourteen years.

The Big Interview with Big Gaz

BestBettingSites.com’s Roy Brindley, an old acquaintance that bumps into ‘Big Gaz’ once a decade, sat down with the bookmaking legend to ask Gary some questions that rose after he read ‘Fifty Years In The Betting Jungle’ for the first, and certainly not for the last, time.  

Gary, in your new book, you go to great lengths to explain how Fred Done, a person you had only met once, “saved your life” by paying for your gastric sleeve operation. Is this kind of generosity commonplace in the old-school bookmaking fraternity?

“Amongst the old-school bookies, yes, and Fred was the original back street bookie in Salford before he made it big. The wife or mistress would end up spending the money back in the day, so we always needed someone to bail us out of trouble! So, we looked after each other.”

“What made Fred’s act of generosity all the more extraordinary, though, was that I had only ever spoken to him once, and that was almost twenty years earlier! As I write in the prologue of my book, Fred did save my life and I’ll never be able to thank him enough.”

Can racecourse bookmakers be categorised or pigeonholed? Or are they, like most walks of life, a mixed bag of people? 

“Most racecourse bookies are greedy and wouldn’t miss a day if they could – as they would be too worried about how much they could have won if they set up a pitch instead of a few days in the sun. They feel that they have to be there.”

“Not all of them, of course, but the vast majority are cut from the same cloth, which is probably not the answer you were expecting to hear. I have to say it as I see it: most of them are greed machines, so, yes, they can be pigeonholed.”

Bookmaking at racecourses, is it a dying business that will one day end? What do you think the landscape will look like in 20 years?

“No, it won’t end in Britain and Ireland because the betting ring is the racecourse’s beating heart, giving vibrancy to the race day experience.”

“Without on-course bookies, it would be so boring, like going to Longchamp on Arc Day with people in long queues waiting to reach the cashiers, just like at a bank. Talk about a soulless experience! People might as well go to the park for the afternoon instead.”

“As for the landscape in 20 years’ time, I hope there are still racecourses because if there are, then there will be on-course bookmakers. Perhaps there will be a few fewer, but I don’t see it going the same way greyhound tracks in the time frame you mention.”

“As for what I’d like it to look like, I think we would also like to see the betting ring thriving like it was when I first started in the 1970s. But that is too much to ask for these days – with online betting being the way it is and football having overtaken horseracing as the number one sport for gamblers.”

On-course bookmakers were frozen out of the SP data system during Covid times. Now, on-course betting is unlikely to ever play a hand in determining prices again. What are your thoughts on this? Is it good for punters? Or bad for them? Your Frankie day (with firms placing huge bets with you to keep the SP down) can never happen again – right?

“It is interesting that you have brought this up as, funnily enough, there is a clip of me being interviewed by John McCririck from 30 years ago that has been doing the rounds on social media on this very subject recently. It has had over 100,000 views. I haven’t changed a bit; I’m still Gorgeous Gal!”

“To be truthful, it’s absolutely disgraceful. I wouldn’t mind knowing who is behind deciding the final starting prices because no one knows! No one! It could be Mr Moriarty in Brazil, and for punters, it’s terrible.”

“As for what happened in the last race on Dettori Day, that final winner, Fujiyama Crest, would have been even-money or odds-on in the current system and not the returned SP of 2/1.”

“How can we have a system when no one knows who decides the outcome? It’s like going to the supermarket and seeing a carton of milk priced at £5, but we don’t know who set that either – a ridiculous and disgraceful practice.”

It was recently announced Swindon Greyhound Stadium is going to close. Hot on the heels of Crayford’s closure, with the rumour mill suggesting Entain will close another of its tracks (Monmore, Hove or Romford), and Perry Barr is on borrowed time. Where do you see the future of dog racing?

“Only one man is trying to save the sport, and that is Mark Davis. He is the only one putting money back into it, and without him, the game’s gone.”

“I started off as a kennel boy before being a bookie at many dog and flapping tracks before being a pundit on Sky Greyhounds, and it’s just so sad watching this once-thriving sport dying in the way that it is.”

“The only opposition greyhound racing had back in the day for a midweek night out was a trip to the bingo halls, but as you can now watch every sport under the sun on TV, attendance drop-offs mean that many tracks are not viable.”

“Whether it’s five or ten years, the very best we can hope for is that greyhound racing survives in truth.”

Much of your new book focuses on characters. Are they a dying breed amongst on-course punters and fellow bookmakers? Have things become more sterile?

“Yes, one hundred percent. Virtually all the characters have gone, and you don’t know anyone’s name anymore. It’s not people coming to bet who attend the races now; it’s day trippers, and they’re a different breed.”

“And that goes the same for the bookmakers, too. They used to dress smartly to go to work; now it’s jeans and trainers unless it’s Ascot, where Tony May insists on a dress code. Where is their pride?”

What advice would you give to any young man who would like to start a career as an on-course bookmaker today?

“I’ll keep this short and sweet. Make sure you have a rich mum and dad, as you’ll be calling on family help very quickly!”

There is momentum behind a cashless ‘card only’ betting ring. How do you feel about this?

“If there is ever a fully cashless betting ring, I’d pack up immediately. People come to the races with money in their pockets and want to go home with more money in their pockets than they arrived with.”

“Betting with debit cards can also lead to problems for punters because as they are not physically handing cash over, it doesn’t feel as much. Take student days; in today’s society, hardly any of them turn up with cash, and they expect us to take bets on their debit cards like with everything else, so I choose not to attend those anymore.”

“Incidentally, we are not permitted to take any bets via credit cards, which is absolutely right!”

There’s no mention of casinos and poker in your book. Are these off-limits to you?

“As a young lad, I remember my dad returning on the train from Newbury races to Paddington, a regular trip of his, and losing all his winnings, plus what he went with, to card sharks taking it off gullible punters, meaning he had to walk home from Paddington to Islington.”

“From that point onwards, he ruled that no playing cards were ever to be kept at home, only dominoes. So, being no lover of card games from an early age, I am also no lover of casinos, with my family having burnt their fingers.”

Chalkboards, tea chests, ledgers, paper tickets, tic-tac men. All now distant memories. How much would you like to return to those halcyon days instead of printed tickets, electrified runners boards and a direct line to the betting exchanges?

“Not at all. I still use chalkboards, tea chests, ledgers and paper tickets when working at point-to-point meetings. Whoever brought in printed tickets and electrified runner boards should be applauded as punters want to see the horse’s name, stake, and potential winnings so they know that there can be no arguments, as it’s in black and white.”

“When handing out just a ticket and writing the bet down in a ledger, that’s when confusion on both sides can come in, so it’s a one hundred percent good thing.”

Name six people you would like to invite to your dream dinner party. And a sport or sporting event you would like to have laid a book at?

“This is a question that I can’t answer as I’d rather have people who I know and whose company I know and enjoy rather than celebrities. Never meet your heroes, so they say! If you said 666 people, you would be getting closer to an answer, as I wouldn’t want to leave anyone out.”

“After 50 years in the game, I have made a book on most things, many of which I feature in the new book, so for the answer, go and read a copy! Really and truthfully, though, I have covered everything that I wanted to.”

You have been at the game for a long time. Any plans to put the satchel in the loft and call it a day? Indeed, what are you up to these days? Where are you trading?

“As the title of my new book, [Fifty Years In The Betting Jungle], indicates, I’ve been in the game for half a century now, but there are no plans for retirement anytime soon. The way I was brought up in the London markets means working is in my blood, so I will keep wheeling and dealing.”

“What would I do anyway if I were to retire? Watch Loose Women! The only time I will retire is when the big man knocks on the door with the big black car.”

“I still have 75 pitches all over the country and particularly enjoy the Scottish trips. Even though the expenses are going through the roof (us on-course bookies are the biggest cry-babies, but we always come back!) I still enjoy the game too much.”

How to Find Your Way to Gary’s Betting Jungle Book

Recommended as a 5-star read for anyone remotely interested in betting and bookmaking during a halcyon period – before, in Bob Dylan terminology, it went electric – Gary Wiltshire’s ‘Fifty Years In The Betting Jungle’ can be ordered directly from its publisher, Weatherbys.

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