This was recently reported by Tony Blair on David Letterman’s show.
He had been to a meeting in Belfast just before his new child was born and someone in crowd shook his hand and asked what he was planning to name the baby. Blair replied that if it was a boy they would name him after Tony’s father.
Some time later he returned for the next meeting and the guy approached again.
Since he now had a deep tan, Tony asked if he’d just been on holiday.
The man said yes, with the tip on the boys name he rushed down to the bookmakers
and put a thousand pounds on that to be the boy’s name, and won big, so he spent it on a trip to a resort.
Did I miss the punchline?
Don’t worry. I’ve got some spares. You’re welcome to borrow one (or more):
“Rectum? Damn near killed 'em.”
“Poe wrote on both.”
“$20, same as in town, father.”
…and I even think I’ve got a dusty pair “To get to the other side.” and “Orange you glad I didn’t say banana?” lying around here somewhere.
I was looking for something in the neighborhood of “but Chunks is my dog!” Do you have anything close? Oh, I’m also running low on “Your Honor, I didn’t say she was acting weird, I said she was fucking Goofey.” Do you happen to know when you’ll be restocked?
Well I’m a little disapointed I didn’t find it on snopes, but I used to be an “old regular” there but I couldn’t find it. But running with that, the punch line I’d use is “No soap, Radio.”
No, but I hear there’s a special on “when I said I’d blown a seal …”.
Well, Tony Blair was on Letterman on 9/9/09, but the closest I could find with only a tiny bit of reasearch was:
Headline:
‘We THINK Leo’s mine’: Tony Blair jokes about life after office on Letterman chat show (but did he run gag past Cherie first?)
Letterman brought up the fact that Mr Blair’s wife Cherie gave birth to their son Leo while in Downing Street, the first serving PM for 150 years to have a legitimate child while in office.
‘Kind of makes you wonder what the other prime ministers were doing,’ Mr Blair said, to widespread laughter.
‘He is yours?’ Mr Letterman added.
‘We think,’ a laughing Mr Blair replied. ‘That’s what my wife tells me. I believe her.’
Despite his laughter, the ex-Prime Minister’s joke may be less than well-received by wife Cherie.
This is from accessinterviews.com. I hope this is enough to be ok with the rules of this board.
Sorry I promise I’ll stop responding to my own posts… I am not saying that the OP story was not told on Letterman, but I find it hard to believe that any odds maker would put any decent payout on the parent’s father’s or mother’s names. I would think Leo and Hazel would be less than 1:1. Now if we found out he told him he was a huge fan of the US show Lost and he really likes con men then betting on Sawyer could be a scoup.
My wife is getting tired of my joking about “ours”.
Bookmakers can be famously fallible.
The entries for the womens 3000 metres at the Tokyo World Championships in 1991 included the previously unknown Soviet athlete Tetyana Dorovskikh. Most layers offered fancy prices about her to win the event, and a few shrewd punters stepped in to back her to do it.
Tetyana won easily, which is not surprising when you consider that until she got married to Mr. Dorovskikh she was better known as Tetyana Samolenko, winner of the 3000 metres at the Seoul Olypmics and a previous world champion at the same distance.
Anyway, 10 days before the birth of the Blair boy, the bookmaking firm of William Hill were offering 12-1 against Leo being the chosen name. This price shrank rapidly down to 2-1 when somebody started betting on it, and it turned out to be a relatively bad result for the layers.
When oddsmakers don’t do their homework there are always people around to punish them for it.
Remember that when bookmakers do their job properly, they don’t actually take a position on the outcome. Their job is to adjust the odds offered so that equal amounts are bet on all outcomes, and no matter what happens the bookmaker gets his cut. So they don’t want to take a bet that the Redskins will win unless they have someone else willing to bet that the Redskins will lose.
They must take a position on the opening show.
When the market was first formed it might have looked like this. I’ll make up some names.
Tony 2-1
Emma 3-1
Mohindas 7-1
Cher 7-1
Brad 8-1
Paris 8-1
Leo 12-1
This would give the layer a 13% margin if all names are backed to take the same amount out of the book. In real life, this seldom happens. There’s normally a loser or two in his book. In a market like the Blair one as above there wouldn’t be much money for any name. It would be very weak, in fact. If one or two punters pile into Leo from 12-1 down to 2-1, there is little chance of recouping all the potential losses on Leo from bets taken on the other names, even if the prices on those are lengthened.
Reminds me of the joke about a contest to predict when Mamie Eisenhower would die, and the winning entry was “in about five minutes”.
And here I thought the only surefire route to a small fortune in gambling was a large fortune.
Letterman’s 9/09/09 show is available online. All of his shows are available after a couple of days delay.