If Life is a Gift …

by “Mad Marty” Wilson

Something happened to me in 1983. There’s a friend of mine called Alan Talbot who used to work at a pet food market in Dudley. Alan used to sell pet food, and he was really running bad. His wife had left him. I don’t know why his wife had left him, but he was running really bad because someone else had opened up a massive pet food store at the Merry Hill Center and, of course, it was taking all his trade. He was desperate to get back on his feet and I volunteered to work for him two days a week, Fridays and Saturdays, free of charge. I said, “Just pick me up,” and he used to come for me at a 5:45 a.m. At that time of the morning I would be absolutely dead, but the guy was in trouble, so I gave him some help.

Religiously, every week, a husband and wife named Ron and Doreen who used to breed dogs came along to buy a bag of Chum dry pet food. A big 25 pound bag. Anyway you can look this up, the date was April 23, 1983, and Doreen came on her own and purchased the 25 pound bag of Chum, and I said, “Doreen I’ll take it to the car for you. Oh by the way, Doreen, where’s Ron?”

“Oh,” she said, “he works on these new computer links, and last night they did a dress rehearsal for the Eurovision song contest, just in case there is any breakdowns tonight.”

And I said disbelievingly, “No, they did not,” before jokingly asking, “Who won?”

Doreen said, “I can’t tell you, but seeing how you carried me Chum to the van, it was Luxembourg!”

Now obviously I went down to the betting shop as soon as they opened with the 700 pounds that the pet food store had taken, and I put the £700 on Luxembourg in different shops at 5-1. To be fair, I have told people in the past that they were 22-1, but really they were 5-1 which was a fantastic result for me. It being the first year of the computer links, I stayed up late listening to the show’s host Terry Wogan. They did it in three languages, German, English and French.

England was sixth with a song called I’m Never Gonna Give Up by Sweet Dreams, and when they cast their vote they gave Luxembourg no points. But Luxembourg’s song was called Si La Vie Est Cadeau and the singer was Corinne Hermes.

Translated into English the title of the song was If Life is a Gift. Luxembourg ended up with 142 points, second was Israel with 136 points, and third, with 126 points, was Sweden. Turkey and Spain got no points whatsoever. I stayed up all night listening to this, and to cut a long story short I won £3,500.

This was all just because I was helping a pal, and anyway I ended up lending Alan Talbot £2,000 just to get back on his feet. As I said, the title of the song translated into English was If Life is a Gift, and that was the gift — me carrying that bag of dog food to the ladies car.

Speaking of gifts, I just have to relate to you the quality of the man known as the quiet Irishman, George McKeever. It was January 11, 1997 (not that I can remember these dates) and I was going to Las Vegas for a tournament at the Rio. I said to my son Tom that if I did any good I’d buy us a new mobile home in Bridgnorth. Anyway, I ended up winning the tournament for $60,000. I was very emotional and crying tears of joy as I was on the phone to Tom in the foyer of the Rio. And as I’m crying tears of joy into the phone George McKeever walks past me and sees me crying. He hadn’t heard that I’d won the tournament and thought I was in distress. He reaches into his pocket and pulls out five one hundred dollar bills and turns to me and pushes it in my hands saying, “Will that work, Marty?”

Before I had a chance to find George, he disappeared into the crowd and I’d just like to say now because I didn’t have a chance to say it before, “Thank you, George McKeever. Life is certainly a gift!”

Mad Marty Wilson is a professional gambler and poker consultant for Matchroom Sport.