Betfair Official Blog

Ask a poor stable girl anything you like

The stable girl does what she's told but won't enjoy it, just like Paxman

Jeremy Paxman, speaking at the James Mactaggart Memorial Lecture this summer, attacked modern television's obsession with audience interactivity; berating a fixation with "the red button, fatuous opinion polls, podcasts and multiplatform 360 degree programming."

Well, it seems the masters at Betting.Betfair.com have similar fixations. Earlier in the week I received an email from the editor, ostensibly congratulating me on fantastic reader numbers and the like. I was in good spirits until reaching the last paragraph, wherein its real motive was contained.

It was a missive forwarded on from the Editor-In-Chief, asking all contributors to be more interactive in their content. It asked: "Can you finish your article by posing a few more questions? This is not all the time, just if something might be contentious (we want to see if we can provoke more comments by being more obvious about 'asking' for a response)."

So in true Paxmanesque style, I'll do what I am told, but I won't enjoy it. (Incidentally, if you haven't seen how Paxman reacted when asked to present a weather report as part of Newsnight, you should check out this Youtube link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HMAt8ZXqtbc)

How are we feeling then? If you'd like to let us know, then let me introduce you to the comments area below. You can enter your name and email address. You can also enter a URL. I'm not entirely sure what this means. You can then write a comment and "Subscribe To This Entry". I'm equally unsure what this means. Perhaps you will be sent an email each time I post more delectable prose?

Anyway, live dangerously and try and post something. It'll help me out. The more things you post, the more "interactive" my contributions will be judged, and the more likely the Editor-In-Chief will be to continue paying a poor stable girl desperately needed money.

Yes, I get paid for this. Unbelievable I know. But hey, a horse stamped on my head the other day and I thought I was going to die, so surely I deserve some recompense from somewhere?

What is it you want to know about? What burning questions do you have about life in a racing yard that you want answering? Perhaps you're interested in how races are chosen for horses? How they are trained? What owners are told? What they are not told? How the bloodstock industry works? Maybe you want to know who I am? How a girl gets on in a male dominated industry? What colour my underwear is? Well, I won't answer all questions. (It's largely grey by the way).

(Hey, if, in the search for interactivity, I start getting paid by the question mark, I would have done well in that last paragraph).

That's right, from here on in you, the reader, controls the agenda. If I'm invited back next week.

Incidentally, the Paxman lecture is superb. It's worth a read and the full text can be found here:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/newsnight/2007/08/the_james_mactaggart_memorial_lecture.html