Hats off to Gordon, patron saint of punters

There Bernard would sit, sipping vodka and tonics and laying bets on the sex of the next person to come through the door or which raindrop would slide down the window fastest. Once he played a variant of "spot the lady", making use of the three identical triplets belonging to Richard Hannon, the famous racing trainer. What Mrs Hannon thought of this is not clear. This episode went on to delight West End audiences in Keith Waterhouse's play, Jeffrey Bernard is Unwell. Last year Hannon was appointed racing trainer to the Queen.

Thanks in part to Bernard's selfless and dedicated activity, a national passion for gambling on everything has sprung into being over the past 20 years. A key breakthrough was made by the bookmaker Jonathon Sparke, an Irishman. Sparke's invention, as far as the nation's punters were concerned, bears comparison-to Fleming's identificationof penicillin or Newton's-discovery of the law of gravity.

Sparke devised "spread betting". This meant you could bet on more than the mere result of a race. He opened a market on how many lengths a horse might win by. He might "sell" a close favourite at four lengths or "buy" it at six lengths. If you "bought" and the horse won by 10 lengths then you made four times your stake. The same principle, Sparke found, could be applied to runs scored at cricket, to football, golf and any other sport.

Unlike most inventions, Sparke's came at just the right time. The City was just about to embark on Big Bang and thousands of young traders were happy to bet their huge bonuses on the number of corners in a football-match or even the time of the first throw-in.

The result was spectacular. There was the premiership football match, involving a well known London club, where the ball was smacked straight into touch from the kick-off, as a small, wellinformed section of the crowd chanted "kick-it-out". Nothing was ever proved.

There was an obscure game in Norway where the ball did not go into touch at all for the first 41 minutes. Huge fortunes were made (and lost) on that. In one Serie B game in Italy, bookmakers found that they were taking unprecedented sums of money on the draw. They shortened the odds. Yet more money flooded in. They made the draw an odds-on chance. Eventually, it started at 1-3. After 80 minutes, the gamble looked like being thwarted as one of the sides led by 1-0. Then the scores went level after an own goal. It was an unusual own goal. The man who scored it dribbled all the way back from the half-way line.

There were a number of snooker matches where the protagonists ensured that the final result corresponded with the winning margin predicted by men in raincoats placing giant sums in south London betting shops. Sparke's decision to introduce a market in winning lengths dramatically changed horse- racing. Favourites, instead of winning as they liked, would creep to victory by the narrowest of margins. Jockeys - and trainers - collected far more from the bookmakers than they ever did from prize-money. Nothing was ever proved.

Gordon Brown can list many achievements as Chancellor. But it is a pleasing irony that the greatest of them all has been to lift the tax on gambling. Tomorrow, gamblers everywhere will lift their glasses and drink a heartfelt toast to dour, granite-faced Gordon, the man who gave them their freedom.

Peter Oborne is the Political Correspondent of the Spectator.