Jeremy Chapman was for many years a valuable and important member of the executive team behind The Sporting Life and served as its executive editor and deputy editor.
As a sideline, he developed a devoted following as a golf tipster and writer over the years and is still churning out big-priced winners to this day.
When did you first become aware of The Sporting Life?
When I joined the sports desk of the Daily Sketch in 1966. I got friendly with a good young racing judge called Ken Post (alias The Wizard). I started reading the office copy of The Life and got a feel for the game.
In time, I was asked to give a daily outsider for housewives to back. It was called the Dolly Bet! My biggest success was L’Escargot at 33-1 In the 1970 Cheltenham Gold Cup
When did you join The Life and what was your first job?
It was December 1971. The Sketch had closed in May and with 270 looking for jobs, it was a tricky time. I did a happy summer for The Guardian sports desk and then Ossie Fletcher, the Life editor, whom I’d been to see for a job when the Sketch closed, called to say he’d had to dismiss Jeffrey Bernard and somebody else and there was now a vacancy for me.
I was just packing to start a job on the Johannesburg Star but took the easier option, much to my wife’s relief, and thus began a 27-year stint on ‘The Bible’.
Did you have ambitions to stay there and climb the ladder?
Not to start with but I soon realised that my Fleet Street experience - I had also worked for the Mail, News of the World and Sunday Mirror - put me well ahead as a journalist of colleagues who had joined the Life very young and stayed there. It was a job for life for most of them - but obviously I was behind them in racing knowledge. So, I had plenty of catching-up to do before they accepted me.
‘Fletch’ and I got on well - he even called one of his pet tortoises Jeremy! - and quickly made me an assistant editor. All told, I served as either Deputy Editor or Executive Editor to five different editors, Ossie, Graham Taylor, Monty Court, Mike Gallemore and Tom Clarke. I had a row with only one of them but we finished up best mates!
Any early memories that stand out about experiences, personalities and/or stories of the time?
After a year and sales were bad, so I suggested to Ossie that as golf was booming in Britain after Tony Jacklin’s victories in the Open and US Open, we should tap into the burgeoning golf betting market (all that we really covered before then was the Open and what was then called the Piccadilly World Match Play at Wentworth).
I was tipping in Golf Weekly magazine at the time and it was a wheeze to get me out of the Life office in the summer. I then did the Open on site from then until the paper closed in 1998 as well as the Ryder Cup on both sides of the Atlantic. I covered as many tournaments as my main production job would allow.
Any funny moments you can recall?
I persuaded Ossie that having a Life seller on course when I was covering a tournament would be a great idea to boost sales. At the end of the first Open, I asked the seller how many Lifes he’d sold. The answer was one! Not such a great idea after all!
Any stories or tips that you are particularly proud of? Or not!
My tipping record on golf speaks for itself and my total of winners in Life, Post, RFO and golf journals will never be beaten simply because I have done it for so long!
But what I was proudest of was making 100 points from three racing picks one Saturday when standing in for “The Couch” Mark Winstanley on his successful Beat The Book column, the Life’s answer to Pricewise. He was on holiday and after that he always asked for me to do it when he was away.
It would have been 200 but Alastair Down thought my staking plan too high and halved it!
What was the best thing about working for The Life?
The people. Some great characters like Geoff Lester (we worked together on our first Arc in Paris in 1972 and as luck would have it the connections of the winner San San barely spoke a word of English between them!), Jamie Lambie (who wrote a brilliantly detailed history of The Life), Malcolm Hanover, Chris Gundry, Eric Burt, Ernie Dymock, George White, briefly John McCririck (but we fell out and he didn’t speak to me for years) and later on Bruce Millington, The Couch, Alastair of course and lovely David Ashforth, Bryan Pugh, the Kiwi (Andrew O’Toole), Richard Oliver, Nick Barnes, my late great friend Vic Woodman, Mike Cattermole and Simon Holt.
There was always great camaraderie and tremendous loyalty.
Anything else you wish to add, kick on!
The Life golf tournament and a handicap table tennis tournament were my greatest contributions to the social side as I was no great after-work drinker at our local, The Stab.
We played the golf on a private par-three course in Esher for donkeys’ years and it was always my ambition to see Ossie Fletcher lift the handsome trophy. He was a great supporter of the event but was a hopeless golfer.
One year I allotted him a start of 48 (Vic Woodman and I were the back-markers off 0) and he almost cracked it and would have done so but for McCririck, playing with just a five-iron and putter plus faithful Labrador (called Animal if I remember right), wrecking the script. I had given him 32, too many shots as it turned out!
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