Harry Redknapp laughs at how his grandmother might have reacted had he told her he owned one of the favourites for Friday’s Cheltenham Gold Cup. It was Maggie Brown who first instigated his interest in horse racing in the post-war years, an interest that has taken him and The Jukebox Man to within a whisker of one of the most coveted prizes in the sport.
“I grew up on a big council estate in east London and back in those days betting was illegal,” the former football manager, who had long spells at West Ham, Tottenham and QPR, recalls. “But my nan and her mates loved a bet and they’d just been through the war, been bombed every night, running to air shelters, they’d be losing families and husbands were not coming back from the war. It was a different world, they were just coming off rationing and that was her bit of fun.”
