Christmas racing reading

In one of those old Mae West films a girl admires her friend’s jewellery: ‘Goodness, what lovely pearls,’ only to meet the reply, ‘Goodness, my dear, had nothing to do with them.’

The same was true of the sealskin fur coat and silk stockings worn by the gorgeous Micheline Lugeon, a would-be beautician from Switzerland who became notorious on British racecourses in the Sixties. Lugeon was the mistress of the high-rolling gambler-bookmaker Bill Roper. Roper, who maintained a wife in style as well, and put his children through private schools, needed money to keep the champagne flowing for his mistress at the Pigalle. To find it, he assembled a bunch of accomplices and started rigging races. They would look for small fields of five or six runners and incapacitate the favourite by doping it with barbiturates. They would then accept bets on the fancied horse knowing it could not win and make even more by backing the next best, having driven out its starting price to longer odds.