Kenny Callander on a life in racing, being Kerry Packers bookie and more

Steve 'Chimes' Gillis sat down with one of Australian racing media's great characters, Kenny Callander, for a wide-ranging conversation on Chiming In that covered everything from SP bookmaking in a Hurstville Park lounge room to putting Kerry Packer's bets on while missing a live cross on Wide World of Sports.

Born into the punt

Kenny Callander was born in Sydney on December 9, 1944, and grew up in Padstow after his father returned from New Guinea with his deferred war pay and bought a block of land. But it was Friday nights at his auntie Bertha's place in Hurstville Park that shaped him.

Bertha ran an SP bookmaking operation out of her home, with a crayon around her neck and a clock at the door to timestamp every bet that came through. A young Kenny watched on, mesmerised.

"She'd write the time on the slip and underline it," Callander recalled. "She said, 'If I don't put a time on it, by the tenth slip it'll say five by each way something at half past twelve.' That was the street smarts I learned."

From there, cards around the dining room table every Saturday after the races. Kenny would sweat on someone going to the bathroom so he could play their hand.

From copy boy to racing writer

After leaving school in 1961, Callander sent out forty letters to newspapers and media outlets asking how to become a sports writer. He got two replies. Eventually a letter arrived from the Daily Mirror offering positions for copy boys, and despite his mother's heartbreak, he took it.

Within six months he had been moved into sport, and when racing writer Tommy Brassel went on long service leave, Callander filled in and never went back. He sat opposite Bill Morty for eight years, filing copy by phone to a copy taker banging it out on a typewriter.

The Morty stories were a highlight of the interview. In one, Morty rang Callander from an overnight card game at half nine on a Saturday morning, winning and unable to leave, asking him to detour via his mother's house at Concord West and retrieve five thousand dollars from under the mattress.

"He said, 'She's deafer than you. When she puts her ear over the kettle to see if it's boiling, duck into my bedroom.' He said there was $5,000 under the mattress. Put it all on best card in the last at Rosehill."

The horse won at two to one. The bookie didn't have fifteen grand in the bag. They settled in cash and a cheque.

Kerry Packer's bookie

The centrepiece of the interview was Callander's years acting as Kerry Packer's on-course agent, getting the boss's bets on while simultaneously working for Channel 9, a channel Packer happened to own.

The most famous incident came when Packer rang Callander at Rosehill with ninety seconds before a live cross and told him to get forty thousand on a horse.

"I said, 'Boss, I won't have time to get out of the bookies. Mike Gibson will cross to me and there'll be no one there.'"

Packer's response was brief. "Son. Who do you think owns the effing television channel?"

Callander went and put the bet on. Gibson crossed. Nobody was there.

The settlements ran to hundreds of thousands. On one occasion Packer lost around seven or eight hundred thousand on a Saturday, then left for New York the next morning, leaving Callander to relay the amounts to his secretary Pat, who was used to receiving totals of fifty or sixty thousand.

"I said, 'Phil Mattz, twenty-seven thousand.' She said, 'Gee.' I said, 'Dominic Burn, thirty-eight thousand.' She said, 'Shit.' I said, 'Pat, you haven't heard anything yet.'"

The 12th Man and the footy show

In the early eighties, comedian Billy Birmingham released The 12th Man, featuring Callander calling races with horses all named variations of the same thing. The album went gold. Birmingham gave Callander the record at a celebration at the Mosman Rowing Club.

"He said, 'Mate, I made a bigger mug of you than anyone.'"

Callander brought the gold record home and put it on the wall of his office. Helen came home from tennis and took it down. It has been under a bed through several house moves ever since.

The exposure led to regular appearances on the Footy Show with Fatty Vautin and Peter Sterling, invariably involving elaborate skits built around Sunshine Sally, a real racehorse whose name had been used on the album.

Ray Warren, the cells, and the best caller there was

Callander and Ray Warren became close friends after Warren arrived from Junee around 1970, describing them as like minds and like bodies.

The most memorable story involved Warren directing traffic outside a Chinese restaurant in Sussex Street at one in the morning to help a friend reverse out of a parking spot. A driver got out of his car. Warren identified himself as a former police cadet and took charge of proceedings. The driver, who turned out to be an actual policeman, put Warren in the back of the police car and took him to the cells at Central Station.

Callander rang Warren's wife Monica at two in the morning to tell her.

"She said, 'Tell them to leave him there,' and hung up."

On Warren's talent, Callander was unequivocal. "He called what was on the screen. That's what made him so good. Some blokes ramble on. It's not what you're looking at."

Family

Callander and his wife Helen have been married for fifty-eight years. Of their four sons, Dave became a schoolteacher, Steve holds the Herbert Hoover Chair at Stanford University as a professor of political economy, Richie discovered golf before discovering drink, women and the punt, and Matty passed away from brain cancer at forty-six.

It was Matty who came up with the idea of beanies for brain cancer and partnered with Mark Hughes to launch what became a hugely successful foundation. His daughter Maddie, Kenny's oldest grandchild, is now supervising producer of Wide World of Sport at Channel 9 at twenty-nine.

"She throws to Helen," Callander said simply.

A life without regrets

Asked whether he had any regrets, Callander paused, then shook his head.

"People think I'm one of them. They think he's fair dinkum and he's one of us. Not up in the clouds. I like to think of myself as a knockabout."

He still follows the races closely, watches plenty of rugby league on television, and gets to the pub when he can. He stopped going to the track when the bookmaking ring faded away, not wanting to be the old bloke lingering around the pressroom.

"It's the guys of 2026. It's their day, not my day."