Fifty Years in the Betting Jungle: Confessions of an on-course Bookie
Fifty Years In The Betting Jungle is the follow up to Gary Wiltshire’s Winning It Back (2011) and is co-written with Paul Jones, the author of the first 16 editions of the Weatherbys Cheltenham Festival Betting Guide (2000-2015).
Whereas Winning It Back was an autobiography detailing how Gary came back from losing £1.4 million on a single race when Frankie Dettori completed his ‘Magnificent Seven’ at Ascot in 1996, Fifty Years In The Betting Jungle subtitled ‘Confessions of an on-course Bookie’ for a very good reason, marks a half-century since Gary started out in the betting ring and features a ‘warts and all’ look back at the many eye-popping tales and characters that he encountered on his extraordinarily-colourful journey.
Dubbed ‘The Belly From The Telly’, after fifty years in the game Gary’s is the most recognisable face (and waistline) left remaining in the betting ring so he has many stories to tell and has been described as Britain’s biggest gambler in more ways than one. Tale after tale he goes into detail about his mischievous, enlightening and entertaining betting-ring experiences at racecourses, greyhound tracks, point-to-points, flapping tracks, big sporting arenas and even a fishing lake told in his own inimitable style taking readers back to the halcyon days of when the betting jungle was the beating heart of the racecourse.
In the prologue Gary also gives a brutally-honest update for readers of his 2011 autobiography on the big changes in his personal life in the intervening fourteen years.
“An Eastender with more twists and turns in life than the soap opera itself. He’s had everything and he’s lost everything but he’s always done the right thing by the people who bet with him and done so with a smile.” Matt Chapman“
From one old-style bookie to another, Gary is a gambler who takes winning or losing on the chin in equal measure.” Johnny Dineen
“If there was a King of the Betting Jungle then Gal would be the odds-on favourite, from the King of the Jungle.” Harry Redknapp