Horace Cyril Batchelor (22 January 1898 – 8 January 1977) was an English gambling advertiser. He was best known during the 1950s and 1960s as an advertiser on

Radio Luxembourg Radio Luxembourg was a multilingual commercial broadcaster in Luxembourg. It is known in most non-English languages as RTL (for Radio Television Luxembourg). The English-language service of Radio Luxembourg began in 1933 as one of the earlies ...

. He advertised a way to win money by predicting the results of football matches, sponsoring programmes on the station. His spelling out of Keynsham, a town in western England where he operated, made it famous.

The "Famous Infra-Draw Method"

Batchelor sponsored programmes on Radio Luxembourg to promote his "Famous Infra-Draw Method", a system that he claimed increased the chances of winning large sums on the football pools. Before the National Lottery started in 1994, the "Pools" was the only way to win large sums for a small stake. Listeners were asked to submit their stakes to Batchelor, who then determined how the stake was placed. He was paid only if the bet won. Infra-draw was thus not dependent on his predictive talent for its financial success.

Advertising on Radio Luxembourg

Radio Luxembourg was a music station broadcasting to Britain from Luxembourg as a way to circumvent the BBC's national monopoly and the policy in the United Kingdom of no broadcast advertising. The station played pop music promoted by record companies. The advertisers were allowed to buy air time in units of 15 minutes. Batchelor's programme usually featured the

Deep River Boys The Deep River Boys were an American gospel music group active from the mid-1930s and into the 1980s. The group performed spirituals, gospel, and R&B. Members The original group consisted of Harry Douglass ( baritone), Vernon Gardner (first t ...

, a

gospel Gospel originally meant the Christian message (" the gospel"), but in the 2nd century it came to be used also for the books in which the message was set out. In this sense a gospel can be defined as a loose-knit, episodic narrative of the words a ...

/barbershop group seemingly performing live. He voiced his own advertisements, inviting listeners to write for details of his "Famous Infra-Draw Method for the Treble Chance" that he promised was able to predict the drawn games on which winnings depended. The address was always read as "Horace Batchelor, Department One, Keynsham, spelt K-E-Y-N-S-H-A-M, Keynsham, Bristol". Batchelor needed to carefully spell Keynsham out loud for his listeners (and prospective clients), as the town's name is pronounced ''CANE-sham'', and its spelling is not obvious from the way that it is pronounced. Batchelor's slow, very deliberate spelling and repeated mentions of Keynsham on his programme led to the town's name becoming something of a meme.

Personal life

Batchelor was a watercolour painter of many subjects. His studio was the entertainment room at the side of a detached house, a sparsely furnished, bow-windowed room with cocktail bar and steel shutters. He spent his last years mainly in one small room equipped with a

chaise longue A chaise longue (; , "long chair") is an upholstered sofa in the shape of a chair that is long enough to support the legs of the sitter. In modern French the term ''chaise longue'' can refer to any long reclining chair such as a deckchair. ...

and two televisions, one colour, the other monochrome, rented from Granada TV Rental at

Knowle, Bristol Knowle is a district and council ward in the south east of the city of Bristol in England, United Kingdom. It is bordered by Filwood Park to the west, Brislington to the east, Whitchurch and Hengrove to the south and Totterdown to the north. ...

. His housekeeper communicated with visitors and tradesmen. His son Richard took over the business of results prediction. Following his death in 1977, ''

The Times ''The Times'' is a British daily national newspaper based in London. It began in 1785 under the title ''The Daily Universal Register'', adopting its current name on 1 January 1788. ''The Times'' and its sister paper '' The Sunday Times'' (f ...

'' published his will on 3 March of that year, showing he left just under £150,000.

In culture

Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band

The

Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band The Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band (also known as The Bonzo Dog Band or The Bonzos) was created by a group of British art-school students in the 1960s. Combining elements of music hall, trad jazz and psychedelia with surreal humour and avant-garde a ...

named an album '' Keynsham''. The Bonzos referenced Batchelor on other occasions as well: Batchelor's voice is imitated at the start of the Bonzos' song "You Done My Brain In", (the opening track on the Keynsham album) saying "I have personally won over..."; and his is one of the names listed as a spoof band member in '' The Intro and the Outro'', the opening track on the second side of the album ''

Gorilla Gorillas are herbivorous, predominantly ground-dwelling great apes that inhabit the tropical forests of equatorial Africa. The genus ''Gorilla'' is divided into two species: the eastern gorilla and the western gorilla, and either four or fi ...

''.

Play

''An Audience with Horace Batchelor'' by playwright Kevin Cattell and starring Roland Oliver played at Tobacco Factory Theatres in July/August 2013, and was revived for the Salisbury Playhouse in April 2014.

References

External links

Radio Luxembourg advert (audio)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Batchelor, Horace 1898 births 1977 deaths People from Keynsham British advertising executives English radio people English gamblers