One of the best-known and flamboyant London showmen who pitched up at Petticoat Lane market every Sunday wasn’t Alan Sugar, who started his business career as a stall-holder at the famous East End market, but a black racing-tipster who grandly called himself Ras Prince Monolulu. In fact, from the 1920s until he died in 1965, and he was probably the most famous black person in Britain.

Monolulu usually wore an ostentatious head-dress of ostrich feathers, a multi-coloured cloak and gaiters, a huge scarf wrapped around his waist and was hardly ever without his huge shooting stick-cum-umbrella. Of course anybody who was considered remotely amusing in those days had to have a catch-phrase and Monolulu’s, heard by everyone at Petticoat Lane and race-courses around the country, was:

“I Gotta Horse, I Gotta Horse’!

He would say to those who paid for tips from him, “If you tell anyone, the horse will lose”.

Monolulu was obviously a real character, but his tips weren’t based on any kind of knowledge whatsoever, unlike my own methods. Listen to him ranting at the races on YouTube!