An Introduction to Ken Payne

The first chapter from his biography

"The Coup"

There’s something special about the smells and sounds of a horse yard on a crisp autumn morning, even when it's just a little four-horse yard that's just as much a pigpen and chicken run, as mine was on that particular October morning in 1967. The air was cool and wet and pungent, a sweet, heady mixture of damp earth and woodsmoke, of new hay and horses. In the boxes the lads were chattering away as they bent to their tasks, brushing and polishing, feeding and water­ing, mucking out the stalls. The chickens clucked about, in and out of the horse boxes, pecking at the ground. Back beyond my New Forest cottage I could hear the pigs grunting over their morning feed, wallowing in the fresh mud of the autumn rains. This morning the sun was coming up after the rain, and the overnight hoarfrost glinted on the wet grass as the first bright rays flashed through the stands of beech and elm and oak, ablaze in the red and gold of the season. It was a splendid morning, a morning to erase such burdens of civ­ilization as bank managers and overdrafts and final reminders in windowed brown envelopes. What were bills, what was money, on a beautiful October morning such as this?


Bills were drowning me… Money slipped through my fingers like quicksilver but I was hanging on in there, I was scheming, I think I must have been born scheming. A good winner, that's all I needed... One good coup to clout the bookmakers around their earholes only how, how to pull off a good'un and get myself a real stake? I couldn't do it with what I had in the boxes, that was for sure. Not with Harry Flapman that randy old stallion, not with Portulac, nor with Lark Spring, nor with Skippin, either. I was standing there in the yard that morning, wonder­ing if maybe I ought to have another go at the window cleaning business, which I'd just given up. Then Ralph Emery drove up with his pig trailer, Ralph, one of my good neighbours there at Romsey, was a genius with pigs. He could take a look at a fresh litter, all pink and wet and wriggly like a bunch of fat worms, and point out which would gross up big and flour­ish, and which would never make the grade, he was always right. Or as near right as made no difference. Ralph had the same feel for ponies, he could eye a new foal, with its skin still shiny, the little bugger standing there shivering, legs wobbly and splayed and he could tell you, Ralph could, if it would ever make tuppence at the sales, or ever win a race. If Ralph's wallet had ever been as full as his heart, he might have been a very big man in racing. But Ralph was generous almost to a fault, a real softie, still, maybe a happier if poorer man for it all.

Anyway, there was Ralph Emery that morning, thin as a fence rail, his normally pallid face flushed with the cold like a rosy apple, deerstalker covering his sandy hair, and his hacking jacket, as always, looking like sixpence worth at the jumble sale. He got out of his old banger that once must have been a lovely Jag, went around the back and began to unload the big trailer. I ambled over. "Got that steeplechaser you were after at Ascot, did you?" I said to him. "Not exactly" and down the ramp he led a ragged-looking beast, a mean-eyed chestnut as thin as Ralph himself. Seldom had I seen a less handsome specimen... "What in hell's that?" I said. "Name's Neronton", Ralph said, looking a bit sheep­ish "a gelding." I shook my head. "Don't tell me you actually paid cash money for this animal, Ralph?" Ralph slowly rolled himself a Golden Virginia, scraped a Swan Vesta, and lit the fag. He sucked in a deep drag, exhaled the smoke, a blue cloud mixed with his own frosty breath. "I did," he said. "What the Christ for? What happened to the steeple­chaser you had your eye on?" Ralph sighed... "Well, there was this chappie, you see," he began and then unfolded another Ralph Emery sob story, in which Ralph as usual winds up reaching for his wallet.

This time it was a guy with a hard luck story about a marriage, a divorce and the only thing he had left in the world to sell — his race-horse. It seems this chap had married the boss's daughter, and been made a company director. But it was a door that swung both ways, of course. When she tired of him and kicked him out, the job went out the door with him. He was left with nothing but a batch of solicitors' bills and his beloved gelding, Neronton. Now he had the gelding at the Ascot sales because he just had to raise £350. All this he had recounted to Ralph Emery, shedding bitter tears all the while. "Well, I had to help this chappie out, didn't I?" Ralph said to me. "His horse was coming up in the ring before the one I wanted, so I told him I'd help the bidding up to three hundred or so, so's he'd get his price..." "Yeah, yeah." I knew what was coming. Ralph looked down at the end of his cigarette, squint­ing at it, as though it held some secret in its glowing ash. "I got stuck with it at three-twenty." He threw the dog-end away. "Well, I had to help this chappie out, didn't I?" he repeated. "I guess you did, Ralph." I shrugged. "What do you want me to do with him?" "He's supposed to be a hurdler. Give him a few weeks and see if you can make anything of him. If not, I guess he'll have to go to make dog meat."

When Ralph had gone I turned Neronton over to Doug Ward, one of the lads, went back to the cottage and got out the form book. I said to Lynda, who was living with me then, "My God, you ought to see what Ralph Emery's just trundled in. He ain't ever gonna earn his feed, not this one." I thumbed through Timeform and found Neronton. "I'll be damned," I said aloud. "Listen to this, Lynda, 'Useful high class hurdler'. That scrawny thing out there's won four hurdles, and a selling plate on the flat." I kept reading, and began to see what had happened to Neronton. His owner, or his trainer, or both, had obvi­ously decided to try to increase his earnings by putting him to steeplechasing. He had been knocked about, fallen a couple of times, and apparently decided that enough was enough, he wasn't having any more of that. Neronton had lost all interest in racing and much of anything else, to judge by the look of him.

Actually, despite his Timeform history, I didn't have much hope for Neronton. When a horse has hit the ground hard a couple of times and decides he doesn't like it, it's very difficult indeed to get him interested in racing again. But, animals are funny, a lot like humans in many ways and you never know what'll turn one on again to living. Doug Ward, the stable lad, put Neronton in the one and only vacant box. Only it wasn't quite vacant, the empty box was tenanted by a squatter, a bantam cock we called Fists. Neronton and Fists took up an immediate love-hate relationship that set the whole yard in an uproar, the squawking and whinnying was terrible to hear. When we put feed in the manager the two of them fought like wild­cats; feathers and hair and bran flew everywhere. But when we tried to move Neronton out of the box, fists screeched bloody murder, jumping up and down, flapping his wings, bouncing along scratching at the gelding's heels. If we made a grab for Fists, Neronton would go mad, kick out with his feet, toss his head and snap his teeth viciously. In calmer moments, Fists perched contentedly on Neronton's back, supervising the scratchings of his harem around the yard, while Neronton munched on his feed. At least he was eating and filling out a bit. At least he seemed to have found some interest in life again, albeit an arrogant little bully cockerel. But interest in any thing to do with racing, or with any­thing at all to do with the routine of a racing yard — zero. Neronton just didn't want to know. And as I said, horses are funny, like people, and clever — like some people. Horses know how to malinger if they don't want to race. I remember a mare one time, when I was an apprentice jockey, which went lame every time she went to the race track, but recovered miraculously the moment she got home. Eventually we fooled her by leaving on her work plates when she went to the track, and before she realised where she was and what she was doing she had won by two lengths.

Now Neronton, when I took him out in the morning, wouldn't even canter. No matter what I did to get him going, he ignored me but as soon as I turned home to his box and that cockerel, he would set off at a real good gallop. But a gallop isn't a horse race, and I was getting nowhere with Neronton when Paddy Baldwin paid a visit to the yard, Paddy was stud groom to Lady Bouverie. I'd met Paddy when I was cleaning windows on her lady­ship's estate, and we'd become good friends. Paddy was absolutely convinced that most race trainers didn't know a damned thing about the care of horses, especially their feet. He was a complete nut on horses' feet. So when we were walking around the yard and I told him about Neronton, he said to me, "Let me have a look at her feet, Ken." "Now listen, Paddy," I told him, "I've seen lots of horses' feet in my time, and there ain't nothing wrong with Neronton's. It's his head that wants looking at, not his feet." "Just let me look," Paddy insisted. I let him look as there was no stopping Paddy when he had an idea fixed in his mind. We went into the box, much to the annoyance of Fists, who set us his usual screeching and squawking and fluttering. I shooed him off Neronton's back, and Paddy went around on his inspec­tion tour, humming and sniffing and snorting under his breath. When he'd finished he stood up and faced me. His eyes were wild. "You need reporting to the R.S.P.C.A.!" he raved. "I don't know how in hell you expect this horse to walk out of his box, much less race. Such feet! The poor thing must be in agony every time he trots!"

I must confess I still didn't see anything wrong with the gelding's feet, but I knew better than to argue with Paddy. If he said he saw something wrong, then some­thing indeed was wrong. Nobody is so smart there isn't somebody just that little bit smarter. Old Atty Persse, greatest trainer of them all, told me that when I was just a two-bob-a-week stable lad for him, and I never forgot it, that's how I picked up a lot of good advice in my life­time. I let Paddy go to work on Neronton's feet. I don't know if what he did hurt the gelding, but it certainly pained me to watch him do it. He cut back Neronton's hooves so far they must have been on the point of bleed­ing. Then he packed each hoof in a kind of poultice made of cow dung, telling me, "Kenny, don't you let this horse out of his box for a week at least. Give those poor feet of his a chance to heal. Don't put shoes on him till then." When the week had gone by, I had the blacksmith put the shoes back on, and I took Neronton out for a little canter. It was a fine morning, cold and dry, for our famil­iar amble through the New Forest before the turn for home and a gallop down the side of a field of stubble. But this morning Neronton was in no mood for ambling. He took off as though I'd set a blowlamp under his tail. It was all I could do to hold him. By the time I got him back to his box, blowing, lathered, but still full of ginger, I knew I was on to something. A little butterfly of excitement fluttered its wings in the pit of my stomach. The transformation was unbelievable; from a horse gone sour to a fresh, keen animal, healthy and spirited. However, the big question remained: would he race? It was time to find out.

We already had a race planned for Neronton, a selling hurdle up north at Catterick. When I'd entered him sev­eral weeks earlier, it had been with little hope of actually running him. But the rules require entering a horse some six weeks before a race, so trainers make entries all over the place with lots of horses that will never actually run. You have until eleven a.m. the day before the race to withdraw your horse without penalty. A "late scratch", as a last-minute withdrawal is called, can get a trainer fined. So I had Neronton scheduled in the kind of race I wanted him to run in and at the track where I wanted him to run, nobody knew me up north. At Catterick they would treat me as just another trainer who ran his horses for fun and a little prize money, as I did with Harry Flapman now and again on the southern courses. In any case, nobody knew me anywhere as a "gambling trainer," the kind who made money for himself and his owners by winning bets, rather than prize money, on his horses. I had never before pulled off a betting coup of any kind. So the situation was perfect for my first one, the one I needed to get myself into the black and set up as a seri­ous trainer. I had the horse and I had the race. But I knew that Neronton absolutely had to win first time out if I was to score big against the bookies. At Catterick he would be going in at long odds, as befitting his last series of awful races. The moment he began to run, however, everybody would know he was back in his original fine form. If he lost at Catterick, he nevertheless would have run such a strong race that next time out the odds on him would be short; he might even be made favourite. No, Neronton had to win that seller at Catterick or there'd be no second chance for me.

That realization still left me facing the ultimate question or, rather, as I thought more about it, two questions. First, would he race and second, how could I test his reaction to a racecourse after his long layoff, without tipping anybody about his aston­ishing recovery? The answer to the first question would have to await the fateful day. However, I could glean an important clue by answering the second question, and I saw the answer to that one coming at Fontwell Park, a week hence. Fontwell is a neat little track near Bognor, not all that far from my yard at Romsey. Its physical characteristics bear useful similarities to those at Catterick. The bends are tight, the ground uneven and wavy, and there are some tricky inclines. As at Catterick, the boxes are close enough to the grandstands for the horses to hear the roar of the crowds and the Tannoy; these are noises a horse must accept if it's going to be a winning racer. Another factor that brought Fontwell into my scheme was its reputation as a track for second-class horses. Therefore the more discriminating punters and bookmak­ers didn't bother to come down for the racing. The last person I wanted to see at Fontwell in a week's time was a sharp-eyed, big-time bookmaker. On that day I had Harry Flapman entered in a selling hurdle but I intended to bring along Neronton and another hurdler in my string, the filly Skippin. What I had planned was intrigue, what occurred nearly degenerated into farce.

On the appointed day I packed my three horses into one of Ralph Emery's big trailers, and off I went to Fontwell. Harry Flapman was scheduled for the second race on the card. I put him, Neronton and Skippin in adjoining boxes, and went off to have a flutter on the first race. I dropped a few bob, tore up my ticket and went back to the paddocks to see about saddling up Harry Flapman and checking on the other two. When I got to the paddock area, the security guard rushed up to me, his face the picture of a man in panic. "Mr. Payne, sir, thank God you're here! Your horse has got loose and he's in that box over there!" He grabbed my arm and pointed… "Get him out, or we'll all be out of a job!" I ran over to where a little stable lad was peering over the top of a box door. His mouth was agape, his eyes fairly popping out of their sockets. And small wonder, I looked inside and there was Harry Flapman doing what he was best at — which was not jumping fences. In fact I made more money renting him out for stud than I did run­ning him. Right now, instead of having his mind on racing, Harry Flapman was covering a lovely little mare. Apparently she was in season and Harry must have scented her, jumped right out of his box and into hers. "What are we gonna do, sir?" stammered the stable lad. "My mare's entered in the next race." "So's my stallion," I said, grabbing a bucket of water, the tried and true remedy for such situations. I let Harry have a dousing and fortunately it was enough to cool him off, I led him out of the box, slipped the lad a ten-bob note, and said to him, "Forget it ever happened, lad, or we'll both be for the high jump." Those few stolen moments of love didn't seem to do much good either for Harry or the little mare. She at least finished a respectable fourth. Harry, sulking all the way like a petulant Romeo, trailed the entire field.

When the day's card was finished I asked jockey Ron Atkins if he'd take one of my horses around the course, in what's called "a schooling run." Brian Lawrence would be up on Skippin to keep him company. "Just see how he goes," I said to Ron. "No need to push him if he jumps okay." By now the crowd was well on its way to the car parks. But when Atkins and Lawrence rode out, a few late leavers turned to watch. Most were simply curious; a few, perhaps, were smart enough to recognise a schooling run, and knew that a trainer didn't go to all that trouble just to give his horse the exercise. Still, I wasn't worried about giving the game away. Nobody knew Neronton's identity. As the horses approached the first hurdle my heart was in my mouth. On his last few times out, before Ralph had brought him, Neronton had either refused or turned around and run the other way. Now he took the first jump without hesitation and I breathed easier. At the second hurdle he went in a length behind Skippin and came out a length in front, by the third hurdle he was flying. "Okay, Ron, okay," I said under my breath. "Bring him back in, he's shown enough!" But Atkins took him all the way around. When he brought him back to me, Neronton was hardly blowing. "He's fine, Mr. Payne," the jockey said, "He can really go... What's his name, anyway?" "Portulac," I said blandly… Butter wouldn't melt in my mouth.

Of course I told Ralph Emery the good news. And I expected that he would confide the glad tidings to a few special cronies. What I didn't expect, but discovered when I arrived at Catterick, was that Ralph apparently had told every pig-farmer and turnip-basher in Hampshire about Neronton. The good folk of Yorkshire must have been amazed at the strange and sudden in invasion of New Forest accents. I knew this meant that the odds would fall on Neronton, but I was hoping that the track bookmakers would take this heavy betting on the gelding as just the misguided loyalty of simple pig-farmers for one of their own, and so would not drop the odds too sharply nor cause the off-track odds to drop too quickly. Since early that morning Lynda had been driving around feverishly, placing small bets in shops everywhere from Southampton to the West End, asking for "board price". That meant we were getting the morning's opening odds "on the board" at the shop, or close enough to it. The "board price" on Neronton was anywhere from 8-1 to 10- 1, depending upon the shop. I just hoped Lynda got all our money down before the odds in the shops began reflect­ing the deluge of New Forest money being bet at the track. In any case, these "board prices" would have been better than the so-called "starting price" on Neronton. This price is the average of the prices offered and laid on the course at the time the race starts. Since this price is obviously very sensitive to the betting at the track, in Neronton's case his "starting price" was knocked down to 5-1. Unless a punter in a betting shop specifies "board price" when he bets, he will be paid the "starting price". Since I had something like two thousand pounds bet on Neronton, that difference in odds could mean as much as ten thousand pounds in winnings for me.

Neronton was in the opening race, a £500 selling hurdle. My jockey was Brian Fletcher, who was to ride Red Alligator to victory in the Grand National a couple of months later (and who won it twice more some years later with Red Rum). In the paddock I gave Brian a few encouraging words, because I didn't think he was overwhelmed with Neronton's latest form, not that he wouldn't give me his best ride just the same. "You'll win it," I said to him. "Just remember there's a fast finish here at Catterick, so hold him for the first few hurdles, then let him out." Brian nodded. To him, after all, it was simply another race, and a cheap seller at that. To me, it was a beginning — or an end. I had scraped together all I could beg or borrow to pull off this coup. But I couldn't tell my jockey that. That January afternoon was cold, windy and grey, Yorkshire in winter is never the cheeriest of places. And now, suddenly, I felt depressed. My teeth began to chat­ter, more from nerves than from cold. I began to doubt the wisdom of my adventure. What the hell was I doing? As the horses paraded to the post I took hold of myself. At least Neronton looked unperturbed and Fletcher, I knew, had the nerves of a burglar. It could be done, I could pull it off. I took a deep breath, felt better, and rushed to put another fiver on my gelding. Ralph Emery came over to me then. "Sure hope he wins it, Mush," he said. He always called me Mush, I never knew why. "Got a few bob on it, eh?" I said, smiling. Ralph snorted. "Sold every pig I had and bet it all." My smile vanished, just what I needed to start my teeth chattering again.

Then they were off, Brian got him off sharply, and as the pack reached the first hurdle, Neronton was tucked in neatly behind the favourite and leader, Jungle, ridden by Paddy Broderick. Coming up to the fourth hurdle, down the back stretch, Brian began to move Neronton up smartly. And then, at the fifth, it happened. Neronton fell. Clearly, indelibly, as though it was happening in slow motion, we saw him stumble to his knees and Fletcher pitch forward between his ears. I turned away in shock I wanted to cry. Ralph put a hand on my shoulder and said to me, "Never mind, Mush. You did a great job. He would have won it. There's always a next time." Not for me there wouldn't be, I thought. It was back to cleaning windows for a living. "Let's get back to the unsaddling enclosure," I said to him. "Brian'll bring him in" A couple of seconds later, I was hearing the racing commentator over the Tannoy, only what I was hearing I was not believing. "...and it's Neronton coming up fast now as they approach the last, and it's Neronton taking over as they come to the straight!" Ralph and I stared at each other, incredulous. I was too small to see over the crowd, but Ralph ran up a couple of steps and stood on his toes for a look. "You won't believe it Mush," he called to me, his arms flapping about in excitement. "He's winning, Mush, he's winning!" Neronton won, going away and to this day I have that wonderful photograph of Brian Fletcher, clumps of mud on the front of his cap, leading Neronton into the winner's enclosure. Yes, the gelding had stumbled, but Brian had stayed with him and Neronton had climbed back to his feet, thrown Brian back into the middle, and taken off after the field. It was a remarkable comeback, and it showed the kind of courage the gelding had.

The aftermath of the race was like one of those Ray Boulting comedy films they used to make at the old Ealing studios back in the 1950's. Ralph Emery and his odd assortment of pig-farmers were running around trying to get paid. But the bookies simply didn't have that much cash on hand. They wanted to pay off in cheques, which was normal procedure. Only these lads from the New Forest weren't having any of that. Oh no! Cash on the barrelhead they wanted, and they were getting more than a bit hot under the collar as the bookies tried to stall them off. Eventually, with the help of the clerk of the course, the Bookies got the cash together, much of it in Scottish notes. The New Foresters didn't care for that, either, none of that foreign money for them. They wanted good English pound notes. It took all my powers of persuasion to convince them that the money was good, they took the cash, although not one hundred per cent convinced. On the way back down the motorway, I had three of them in my car, and they made me stop at every service station along the way to change a few notes and so verify that they were honest paper of the realm. I was dead tired by the time I got back home, physi­cally and emotionally wrung out. I put Neronton back in his box, where he was greeted raucously by Fists, distrib­uted tips to all the lads, as was customary after a win, and made my way wearily into the house. There was Lynda, waiting for me. On the table were handbags and carrier bags overflowing with fivers and tenners. Suddenly, I wasn't tired anymore... I felt a tremen­dous lift of exhilaration, I was ready to take on the whole world of racing. With twenty thousand pounds in my pocket there'd be no holding me, I began to laugh hyster­ically. Not bad, I thought, not bad for a little titch from Bassett Green... Pretty damned good, in fact, considering how it all began.