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HARRY REDKNAPP EXCLUSIVE: How a fake jockey took me for a ride... I was conned into paying for £150 taxis, giving him seats in a private box and signed shirts from Bale. Three years later, I found out he was just a potman in the pub
I was introduced to ‘Lee Topliss’ at Les Ambassadeurs casino in London one night during my time as Tottenham manager.
Lee Topliss is a young jockey who has been riding for Richard Fahey at Musley Bank Stables since 2009. He is regarded as one of the best apprentices in the game.
This guy seemed a nice kid. He wasn’t dressed too well, looked like he could do with a few quid, but very open and chatty.
If you like a bet, he seemed a good man to know.
Then the conversation turned to football. ‘I love Tottenham, Harry,’ he said. ‘The only problem is, I can never get a ticket…’
Suddenly, he was at near enough every home game. He’d ring me up, give me a few tips for horses — they usually got beat — and then arrange to come to the match at the weekend. Half the time I’d end up dropping him at the station afterwards because I felt sorry for him.
He came everywhere. Directors’ box at Manchester United and Arsenal, in a private box next to Roman Abramovich at Chelsea.
We went out for dinner after a match and I’ve never forgotten the way he tucked into his food. I’ve never seen a jockey eat like it. He even had dessert.
‘Are you sure you should be having all those calories, Lee?’ I asked him. ‘Oh, it’s OK, Harry,’ he assured me. ‘I sweat it all out in the sauna in the morning.’ What do I know? He went through the card and then I gave him £150 for a taxi back up to Newmarket.
This went on for years. If we had a big game, he was there.
One day he said he had an offer to go to Dubai for a few weeks and ride for the Godolphin stable.
‘It’s a great opportunity, Harry,’ he said, ‘but I’ve got to pay my own way and I can’t afford the air fare. I’ll get prize money out there but I can’t collect it until the end of the month.’
‘How much do you need, Lee?’ I asked. ‘About five hundred quid should do it,’ he said. So I lent him £500. I never saw that again, prize money or not.
When I switched clubs, Lee’s allegiance to Tottenham turned out not to be as strong as he made out. Now he was going everywhere with QPR.
On the last day of last season, he came up to Liverpool as my guest, sat in the directors’ box and, at the end of the game, pleaded poverty again. ‘I’m riding down at Newbury tomorrow, Harry, and I’m not sure I’ve got the train fare.’
He even cadged a lift to the station out of me, which took me in the opposite direction to home.
I just felt sorry for him. He was always on his own, and he obviously wasn’t making much money, despite being a top apprentice.
And then I got a phone call from Willie McKay, a football agent. ‘Do you still speak to Lee Topliss, Harry?’ asked Willie. ‘Yeah, I do,’ I said. ‘He’s always calling me, more losers than winners, mind you.’
‘Right,’ Willie continued. ‘Well, I think I know why his information isn’t so clever.’
‘Why?’
‘He’s not Lee Topliss. He’s a potman at a boozer in Newmarket. He picks up glasses - he’s not a f****** jockey.’
Three years he’d had me.
The best seat in the house, good restaurants, lifts here, there and everywhere - and heaven knows what in hand-outs.
And it was a sheer fluke that Willie found out the truth. A while ago, ‘Lee’ had given Willie a rare successful tip, so the next time Willie was at Doncaster, he saw Lee Topliss’s name on the card and wanted to thank him.
But when he saw him ride around in the parade ring, it didn’t look like Lee Topliss. Taller for a start. Willie put it down to the protective racing helmet he was wearing and thought no more of it.
Then, a few races later, he saw Lee with his back to him in the paddock. Now was the chance to say something. He tapped him on the shoulder.
Harry Redknapp
Extracted from Always Managing: My Autobiography by Harry Redknapp with Martin Samuel, published by Ebury on October 10 at £20. © Harry Redknapp 2013. To order a copy for £15.99 (p&p free), call 0844 472 4157.
‘Hello, Lee, I’m Willie, Harry’s mate, thanks for the horse you gave me, good lad, it ran well,’ he said.
The jockey stared at Willie as if he was mad.
‘I’m Harry Redknapp’s friend,’ Willie repeated. ‘If you ever need anything, give me a ring.’
Again, he was staring back at Willie as if he had landed from the moon. Then Willie began to study the lad’s face. It wasn’t the ‘Lee Topliss’ he knew, the one he had met with me at Les Ambassadeurs.
And then Willie started making enquiries.
I thought I was streetwise. This guy, ‘Lee’, was a different class. I’m told when Istabraq won the Champion Hurdle, he’d led the horse into the winner’s enclosure waving the Irish tricolour. Everyone thought he was part of the trainer Aidan O’Brien’s stable but it turned out they didn’t have a clue who he was either.
He was a conman preying on the racing scene and the little Irish rogue had us all. I’m told he was working the same racket with Liverpool’s Glen Johnson, plus a couple of football agents and other managers.
I can imagine him now, in his room full of signed shirts —Robbie Keane, Aaron Lennon, Gareth Bale, all collected through me.
So I’d got sacked by Tottenham, relegated with QPR, my mate of three years turned out to be an Irish crook, and my last memory was of him disappearing off to Lime Street station in Liverpool with another £150 of my money.
Oh yes, it had been one hell of a year.
