Tweeting Winners

Immediately after the Cheltenham Festival I received the best birthday present ever. I won’t say that it must have been going “cheap” because that would appear ungrateful and I’ve been wanting a budgerigar for a very long time. 

Following the fantastic victory of Coneygree in the Cheltenham Gold Cup, the obvious thing was to name the bird after the Bradstock’s incredible steeplechaser – which is why I’ve called him Carruthers. Actually that’s just a joke,  I’d wanted to name him Coneygree, but Carruthers just seemed to suit better. Plus there’s the fact that, while I did have a small punt on Coneygree in the Gold Cup, I won a lot more money when his half brother won the Hennessy back in 2011 – so Carruthers it is. 

Carruthers reading about his namesake in The Racing Post 

Carruthers likes to read The Racing Post (I’m talking about the budgie now – obviously, because horses can’t read) and he became particularly animated when he spotted that his namesake was running at Newbury last weekend. He was even more delighted when the horse won, which reminds me of Sid James in the 1971 film Carry On At Your Convenience. 

If I remember correctly, Hattie Jacques had a budgie called Joey, who predicted the results of races. Sid James would read out the list of runners and Joey would tweet when he got to the name of the winner. It wasn’t a fluke because Sid James made a lot of money placing bets with his local bookie. It must have impressed me a great deal at the time – otherwise I’d probably be a lot better off financially than I am now. 

Anyway, now that I have a budgie that really can predict winners, I’m a very happy man and I shall do my best to keep him away from the Clerk of the Course’s Jack Russell.

I’ve run a few of the weekend’s entries past him and he chuntered quite happily when I got to Jack Dexter, who needs to bounce back to form if he is going to make much of an impact at Doncaster on Saturday. Happily, he also gave a small chirp when I pronounced the words Vosne Romanee – although I’m not sure whether he was laughing at my accent or agreeing with my selection for Ascot on Sunday. 

Carruthers is sitting on his perch at the moment (the budgie, not the horse - obviously) studying the rest of the races. But don’t worry, rather than feathering my own nest, I intend to keep everyone informed. Keep an eye on our twitter feed (which comes in a box marked Trill and seems to consist mainly of millet) for further news.