Yes that was his usual turn of phrase, QM !!
I think his philosophy was to restrict gambling to horses and dogs. But as both you and melv have pointed out it is far from fool proof.
In my earlier days I spent some time working in the “Turf Accountancy” business. Among the establishments I managed in North London was one which was adjacent to a well known tavern. The publican, an Irishman, owned a dozen or so greyhounds. At that time (and probably still now) the prize money for winning an afternoon dog race was about half the weekly cost of keeping a dog in training. Obviously some “arrangements” had to be made to balance the books. Also at that time (and probably still now) to rig the result of a dog race was simplicity itself. No substances are involved. All you needed was the collusion of the other owners/trainers. The tricky bit was keeping the details of the collusion restricted to as few people as possible so as not to spook the bookies.
The guv’nor of the tavern had these arrangements in place regularly. We knew he had and he knew we knew he had. To keep us sweet we would occasionally be given a little bit of “information” from which we might make a bit of bunce. Very rarely did that information fail and a splendid time was had by all on the proceeds.
Happy Days !
Sorry Ken, I seem to have hijacked your thread :-)