Paddy Power were well and truly caught with their pants down. We all know the Simpsons, and we all remember the “who shot Mr. Burns?” saga. If you don’t, it was something like the “who shot JR” equivalent in Dallas. Mr. Burns was obviously shot in one of the episodes of the cartoon, and we, in our wisdom, decided to bet on who shot him.

Obviously there was no chance it was baby Maggie as she can’t even talk let alone shoot someone, so we put her in the betting at 500/1. In hindsight it may have been a little bit naïve considering firstly that it was a cartoon, and secondly that it was a cartoon. Add this to the fact that the episode had previously been shown in the US. We were cruising for a bruising. A few of the students in Maynooth (a university town in Ireland where we have a shop) heard from a friend in America that it was in fact Maggie who did the deed. They took us to the cleaners!

Thankfully they were students without much money to spend! We took numerous small bets on the baby at 500/1, and needless to say there was some party in the student bar in Maynooth in Dublin when Maggie pulled the trigger, paid for by the 20 odd grand they had won off us. Again, this was front page news under the headline “Paddy Power caught with nappy down”. Great publicity, although we did have a few weeks of fielding phone calls from punters looking for odds on a variety of events that were already over!