AN EXTRAORDINARY GAMBLER.

Taihape Daily Times, Volume XII, Issue 3577, 13 September 1920, Page 3

AN EXTRAORDINARY GAMBLER.

M.' Bilgo't, who won £4500 at the races tke last week in May with his ex-soldier’s pension of £l6O, had a reverse of fortune the following week, when he was excluded fro ..the paddock at Longchamps on the ground that he was too shabbily dressed. In private life a newspaper sclleT, “Old Cherry,’ 5 as he is called, found that not-' even the impressive bulk of his pocket-book, bulging with ’ISOO franc notes, availed to persuade the guardians of the gate ‘to allow' him inside, and he was oblliged to retire to the 4/- ring, where opportunities o bet in large sums are restricted. ! * This remarkably lucky man who sometimes stakes hundreds of pounds cn a single race and wffieu he loses goes back philosophically to his less romantic occupation of selling evening papers in the streets, has sprung into such notoriety that when he ’appears at a racecourse he is surrounded

by a mob eagerly demanding racingtips. Having been arrested when found counting thousands of pounds worth, of banknotes on a bench in the street while drunk and very disreputably dressed, he obtained his .release by satisfying the police that he had-won all the money on the races. 1 ‘l'have a little pension as an old soldier,’' he said, "and when it comes in I always put it on a horse. Then I reinvest my winnings. Sometimes I have long runs of luck. The other day I.had won £2300 by 3.30. but by 5 p.m. I had lost; it all, and in the evening I was selling papers as usual on The Boulevards.”