The Friday interview: Fearless Freddie is racing's odds-on favourite

FREDDIE Williams, 65, one of Scotland's most celebrated bookmakers, was born and raised in Cumnock, Ayrshire.

Ill health in childhood prevented him from following his father and grandfather down the pit, and instead he embarked on a career in the soft drinks industry. He is now the managing director of Caledonian Bottlers, a bottling firm based in his home town.

His bookmaking business grew in tandem with his day-time job, and he owns a number of betting shops. It is as an on-course bookmaker, however, that he is known best, and he now enjoys the tag of "Cheltenham's favourite bookie", thanks mainly to his annual appearances at the spring racing festival in the Gloucestershire town. He can also be found in attendance at most race days north of the Border, and tomorrow will be at Ayr for the Scottish Grand National.

Williams's friends in racing include the television commentator John McCririck and the businessman and racehorse owner JP McManus. He once had to pay out about 1 million on a single afternoon to McManus at Cheltenham after the Irishman won a series of substantial bets.

His most traumatic experience of Cheltenham, however, came later that same day in 1999 when he was robbed by a gang not long after setting out for home. Neither that nor any adverse financial experience has diminished his love of horse-racing, and he has no intention of retiring any time soon.

Q & A: FREDDIE WILLIAMS

How did you get started as a bookmaker? Was it something you always planned to do from the time you learned you could not become a miner?

I never wakened up one morning and said: "I'm going to be a bookmaker." I was sitting in the local pub one night – I'm very rarely in, because I've never drunk in my life – and the guy said he had a building next door and asked what he could do with it.

At that time betting offices and pubs went together, because it was illegal to have a television inside a betting office. So I said: "What about a betting office?" It went really well over the first couple of years – my shop in Cumnock now is only 100 yards from where I started up.

From there I went dog-racing, then horse-racing, and built up the shops. There were seven at one time.

But if you felt able to open a shop, presumably it was already a serious interest of yours?

Yes. When I was a boy I was a punter like everybody else in the district. It was a mining district and gambling was the main hobby, whether it was greyhound racing or horse-racing.

There were pitch-and-toss schools right across Scotland in the '50s and '60s. Every mining village had one. There were very few televisions then. Our interest was betting. Gambling became part of our lives.

Working in the soft-drinks industry, January, February and March is the quieter time of the year, when everybody is just saying: "When's Cheltenham coming round?" So Cheltenham became a big part of your life, and I remember watching it on a wee black-and-white television.

When you were building up your business, was there any one time when you realised you were making a decent go of it?

I don't think there was one special bet or one special day that made me realise it was going to be a success. It was just a matter of working on, getting a turn at the dogs, a turn at the horses, a turn at the shops, keep building up tanks. You get your tank built up so far, then something would happen and you've lost a lot.

What about the other side of the coin, then, times when you thought you might have to give up? People might say they have never met a poor bookie, but you and others in the profession must have had some difficult times.

Oh, of course. For example, in the 1980s I was doing a lot of fixtures, coupons, right across the country. One October every coupon in the country was virtually up. I had 40,000 in the bank, I had a 20,000 overdraft – and my pay-out that weekend was 190,000.

So there's quite a gap in between. On the Tuesday the bank manager phoned me and said: "You're just over your overdraft facility here. There's 90,000 in cheques getting paid out".

I said: "You're not halfway". He said: "For Christ's sake, come in."

He wasn't long till he retired, so he was trying to look after his job. So I said that one of the cheques was for 20,000, and the guy was away on holiday so we had a fortnight before that one had to be cashed. The bank held my house, held my shops as security, and the following two Saturdays we put our coupons out and got a good set of results. By February of the following year we had all the money back that we'd lost in October.

So that time was when it went wrong. There was never one single day afterwards that it all went right. It was just building it all up slowly.

You need the bottle to carry on. I could show you lists and lists of bookmakers who got finished up and didn't make it to the end of the day.

What standing do you think bookmaking has in the public eye? You may not be regarded as the lowest of the low, alongside the likes of politicians or journalists, but are you resented by people as the man who took their money away? Or do you find that people respect your job?

It's changed a lot over the last 60 years. In the 1950s and '60s bookmakers had a terrible reputation for not paying out, or running away, or playing tricks.

There's a photograph up on the wall in the headquarters of the Scottish Bookmakers Association. It's Glasgow bookmakers going on a bus to the races – they used to have the bookies' bus that they'd all go down in. And you look at them and you say "I don't think there's any of them that I'd buy a car from."

You used to get stories up in Glasgow where kids were playing on the step outside the tenements and one would say: "Oh, don't play with her. Her dad's a bookmaker."

But I think the world started to realise towards the end of the last century that bookmaking is a profession. Nobody is out to rip off anybody.

What major changes have you seen in the industry since you got involved?

It has changed quite dramatically over each period of time. If you take it back to the 1920s, from before my time, in the beginning there were on-course bookmakers and there was horse-racing.

It then became on-course bookmakers, the Tote and horse-racing. Then there were town betting offices, then off-course bookmaking. On-course bookmaking has had to compete with everything all along.

Then along came the betting exchanges. If anything has done on-course bookmaking harm it's been the betting exchanges. They've made the biggest difference to the betting ring.

Given those changes and that squeeze on your finances, why have you remained as an on-course bookmaker?

I love it. I absolutely love being on course. Some days you come home tired. On Saturday night, for example, I was at the dog-racing and by the end was absolutely exhausted, but I loved every minute of it.

I'm not getting any younger, to be quite honest with you, and these things take it out of you. But heading for Cheltenham and the festival? You just can't get down that road quick enough.

I really enjoy that type of thing. I think it's the thrill that makes you keep going on.

You must be proud of the tag you have as Cheltenham's favourite bookmaker. Was it always a particular ambition of yours to get involved down there?

Yes. From the 1950s watching Cheltenham on television I wanted to get there for a day out. I put myself on the waiting list from the 1970s to be a bookmaker down there.

It was dead men's shoes the way the system worked. I started off about 120, and by 1999 I was only down to number 40. It was never going to happen.

Then the rules were all changed and you could buy pitches. I was the first person to buy a pitch, and it was No2.

I thought, "Here I am, landed at Cheltenham, on No2 pitch. I'm not just here for a day out; I'm taking on the biggest hitters in the world."

The big hitter you're best known for jousting with is JP McManus. Would you describe him as your favourite punter, or has he given you too much grief to merit that accolade?

John has had a lot of publicity out of it, and I think he enjoys the thrill of being there. I love the guy to bits, don't get me wrong, but he's given me a lot of sore heads.

There are a lot of good punters about, but they don't want the publicity. They just want to come out, then duck back out.

Tell us about the time he took you for 1 million.

That was the day you want to forget. He had had two winners earlier and won 700,000.

He had four horses in the next race, it was a 28-horse race, and the outsider of the four was 50-1. He came in and had 5,000 each way at 50-1 to take 1 million off me in one day.

You can smile at that memory now, but obviously the events that followed when you were driving home were altogether more serious.

Yes. At the end of that day, as if losing those bets to John wasn't enough, I stepped into the car and some people held me up. Ten of them, with crowbars.

They got the rest of the money that was lying in the boot. So we had a bad day all in.

My daughter was driving and they tried to drag her out through the windscreen. They were running about with crowbars.

It's only 20 seconds of your life, so you can't let it dictate the rest of your life. But I'm a wee bit more careful now than I was.

What was the upshot of that incident? Was anyone tried or convicted?

No. Someone phoned me a year later, said somebody had been caught for something else, put up their hands and said they had been part of the team that day, so they were going to be prosecuted for it. But that was the last I heard of it.

You've got to remember that day one bookmaker left 30,000 in his hotel room, went down for dinner, went back to his room and it was gone. And there was a lady who had a lot of valuable jewellery stolen that day as well.

You had to watch your back at that time. Specially in the hotels, because there was a lot of extra staff taken on for the festival.

You'll be at Ayr today for the Scottish Grand National. Is it basically just Cheltenham and the Scottish courses you do, or does it vary a bit more?

Cheltenham and York – we do them so we're up and down the road quite regularly. I drive just under 40,000 miles a year. I do four of the Scottish courses as well, but not Kelso – believe it or not it was the driving that got to me. There's not a decent road from Ayrshire to Kelso.

You're 65, you've had a heart bypass operation, you run your bookmaking business, you own 76 St Vincent Street, the Glasgow restaurant, and you're also the managing director of Caledonian Bottlers. Do you ever wish you had less responsibility and could just have a quieter time working in an office for someone else?

No. See when I'm not here? Everybody will remember me as a bookmaker; everybody will remember me for owning a factory. Nobody will remember me for the days I worked for somebody else from five o'clock in the morning till six o'clock at night. They were the hard days.

Gambling and the soft-drinks business maybe don't seem to be the most natural combination of interests or activities. Has it been easy for you to combine the two, and if so why?

I spent all my working life, from 14 years old, with a soft-drinks company called Curry's soft drinks. It was my trade, really. I knew where I was coming from.

Curry's was bought out then, in 1990, and I went into the betting offices at that stage. But I found there wasn't enough in the betting offices to keep me occupied.

At that time there were a lot of people round about unemployed who had worked for Curry's and had skills to offer this kind of industry, so in 1992 I opened up a company for bottling water.

We've been quite successful. We were always saying: "We're good for another year", but we're now 16 years down the road. A lot of the people who work here now at Caledonian Bottlers also worked at Curry's. The staff here are terrific. I'm very fortunate.