THE DERBY - THE RAIN - THE DINNERS
I have yet to have reports on the Derby dinner - the Savoy-based annual bash of The Derby Club, which is always held on the Wednesday before.
A few years ago, in 2022, I think, some Newmarket tykes made a huge public fuss about the fact that women weren’t allowed in, a rather silly complaint designed purely to embarrass Teddy, Earl of Derby, whose planning proposals for some of his land have always been anathema to the surrounding trainers.
In fact, like so many similar clubs, The Derby Club has only one annual committee meeting, at which they had already discussed and agreed in principle to open the doors. The only problem was that COVID got in the way, and the dinner wasn’t held for a couple of years. The year the Newmarket jet-set complained about this absence of women was, in fact, the last year there were no women members. In fact, all the Lady members who had been suggested as candidates (it is, after all, a Private Member’s Club) had all since been invited by the admirably efficient Club Secretary, a woman.
I would happily concede that this was down to the deeply egalitarian wishes of the Grandees of Newmarket, if only they had shown the same level of thrusting noisy commitment to getting the Jockey Club, which is, in many respects, headquartered in Newmarket, to speed up the woeful conditions of their female jockey changing rooms across all their racecourses a little earlier than 2030 in some cases. God admires equality, especially when it comes to people who make noises like Groucho Marx.
Tonight is the Twelve Club dinner. The same principles are involved, just on a slightly smaller scale. The focus is on a Calcutta Auction. The members buy Sweep tickets; then there is a draw, and the winning Sweep tickets are assigned a horse in the Derby. There is then an auction for each horse. Had I drawn ITEM, for example, and ITEM had been auctioned for £100, I would get £50 as the winning sweepstake holder, and the pool would get £50. That pool is then divided into various %s between the first three and the bottom. If ITEM wins the Derby and the pool was, say, £2000, then the person who had “bought” ITEM in the auction would get, say, 60% of the pool - £1200
But, were I there, what would I want to draw?
