I have to report the sad news of one of Londons best loved racing caracters, Ernie "little Head" Bates. Ernie got catapulted off a fairground waltzer at the age of 6 and from then on his head never grew, it looked like one of those shrunken heads you see in west Borneo, hence the name. At 18 he acquired money left in a trust from the accident but met with bad times as he got 6 years manslaughter for killing his wife with an Axe, it being well documented that she had married him for his money, taunted him and played around.
As if fate would have it, when he was in the Scrubs he fell in with a small time bookie runner, Tommy "tit head" Taylor who was bald at the age of 20 after developing an inoperable cyst on his bonce which looked like a huge nipple, hence the name. With Tommys savvy and Ernies wedge, they ended up being one of London's original underground Bookies.
When I say underground I literally mean that, as in the London Tube. They based their operations at the busy junction of Paddington, where it was easy for runners to converge from other stations with all the factory bets. When betting shops became legal, because of their Criminal record and gangs moving into the business, the pair started working the race tracks as tic-tac men. It wasnt long before poor old Tommys cyst became cancerous and affected his Brain, culminating in some almighty misplacements of bets on the Tracks.
Ernie did his best to cover for him but in the end Tommy went downhill and died. Ernie went on the piss for a couple of years and lost all his money. In a tragic quirk of fate, he ended up working in the oddball booth on a travelling Carnival, some time later he was a Chalkman in a shop in Kilburn where he would get through chalk like a packet of Cigarettes. Being a well known skinny backer, everytime the Jolly lost a couple of sticks would be fired across the floor. Another one bites the Dust :drink:
ucking: 
