Remembering Barney Curley, scourge of the bookies

Barney Curley made a lot of money by being naughty. He came to notoriety in 1975 with the "Yellow Sam coup" that netted him about £1.7-million. Curly and friends assembled an army of "runners" to place bets on Yellow Sam. They used a man in a phone box to prevent the word spreading. YellowSam won easily and made major headlines. Mucho Dinero at Durbanville and Alittlebitnaughty at Greyville were 20-1 local winners in the past week.

Barney Curley was born in 1939 in Northern Ireland. He was a music promoter and managed Frankie McBride and the Polka Dots. Barney was going to become a priest but he contracted tuberculosis and had to spend time in hospital. After that he became a professional gambler.

Curley bought a mansion and raffled it off for a profit of £1-million. He was jailed for three months for breaking Irish lottery laws, but he was freed and had the criminal record expunged when he donated £10,000 to charity. Curley got a trainer’s licence and stables at Newmarket in England. Frankie Dettori was taken under his wing and helped to launch his career. His son died in a car crash and he set up a children's charity in Africa. Barney Curly died at the age of 81 in 2021.