We bought one pitch in England for 32 grand and sold it for £140,000

Justin Carthy is the hottest young bookmaker in Ireland and now the 33-year-old Dubliner - bright, personable and dashingly attired - is making waves in the UK too. Carthy owns 50% of Chronicle bookmaker, which has pitches at all the top racetracks on both sides of the Irish Sea. He calls the odds on the rails, but watching in the background is his co-partner, the legendary entrepreneur Dermot Desmond - close friend of JP McManus and John Magnier, co-owner of the Sandy Lane Hotel, founder of Betdaq, investor in Celtic and much more besides.

At Cheltenham in March Carthy stepped up into the Victor Chandler/ Freddie Williams league, laying one punter's bet of €200,000 to win €700,000 on Hardy Eustace in the Champion Hurdle. The bookie was rooting for Paul Carberry's mount Harchibald, who had been so impressive all winter and seemed to possess a champion's killer speed. As Carberry landed over the last with the proverbial double handful, Carthy and his on-course team were starting to celebrate, fi sts punching the air. But then the enigmatic Harchibald - softie, villain or just a bloody hard ride? - declined to put his head in front and Connor O'Dwyer, coaxing one last effort from Hardy Eustace, stole the race on the line. Carthy swallowed hard and congratulated his punter.

It was the sort of reverse that would've led some of the big high-street betting shop chains to send for their spin doctors and start squealing about massive losses and industry-wide carnage. Not Chronicle. Carthy and Desmond subscribe to the time-honoured notion that a proper bookmaker takes a view and takes on the favourites. There will be days when the high rollers will win, undoubtedly, but over the long-term the bold odds-maker should prevail.

Taking it like a man

Desmond's approach, like that of the Las Vegas casino operator Steve Wynn, is intuitive and inspirational and he has a genius for seeing the bigger picture. 'Dermot thinks there will always be these big players and somebody's got to look after them,' stresses Carthy. 'It's a niche market.'

Chronicle invested widely in the British market from the moment the racecourse pitches were opened up for auction in 1999. They bet at Cheltenham, Aintree, Newmarket, Chester, Ascot, York and Royal Ascot at York, and so far all of the deals have been profitable ones. 'We bought one pitch in England for 32 grand and sold it for £140,000,' explains Carthy. 'I wouldn't sell Cheltenham though for 400 grand and I wouldn't sell Galway for half a million.'

As you might imagine, Carthy adores all the big Festival meetings and in the last week of April he was in the thick of the action at Punchestown's fabulous four-day jamboree in County Kildare. The bookmaker - dark hair, neat sideburns and lightly tanned after a recent trip to Dubai - was clad in the classic racing man's camel coat, worn over a natty pinstripe suit and accessorised shirt and tie. Some 50 yards away a separate crew were running Chronicle's boards pitch while up in the bookmaker's box overlooking the finishing line Carthy's colleague, Albert Sharppe, was looking after special guests.

Sharppe, for 30 years an Irish on-course bookmaker himself before retiring to join Carthy, is an inimitable part of the Chronicle set-up. A piece of framed doggerel on the wall of the Punchestown box, written by punter Johnny Luby, commemorates the consequences of a comfort stop that Sharppe had to make during this year's Queen Mother Champion Chase. In urgent need of the facilities, he'd laid the celebrated punter Patsy Byrne a £7,000 to £4,000 bet in-running about Moscow Flyer - even though the race was nearly over.

Don't ever go for a lake, it's true, That's the story I can tell you. Albert Sharppe went down for nature's call, And Patsy Byrne was on the ball. He had a little bet I'm not a liar, On the Queen Mother and Moscow Flyer.

We thought it was indeed bloody great, The horse pissed in at 13/8. He was just jumping the last when the bet was struck, Patsy, like me didn't give a fuck. For the horse won and I can tell you this, It'll be a long time before Albert goes for another quick piss.

Carthy's box at Punchestown played host to an eclectic mix of farmers, financiers, cattle dealers, Chinese restaurant owners, professional gamblers like the genial Mike Futter, owner of the 2003 Grand National winner Monty's Pass ('Are you still ahead of the posse?' he called out to me), and, at the end of the afternoon, a couple of party-time blondes, one of them boasting an eye-catching cleavage. 'Do you like them?' she enquired, fondling her new boobs with pride. 'I got them in Miami!'

A way with the ladies

Carthy loves this atmosphere. His father used to have a bookmaking pitch at Shelbourne Park dog-track 'and when I was growing up, any time I was allowed to go racing I did'. When he was 17 he left school 'and went in with Shane Browne. He was an accountant really but he also had a few bookmaking pitches.' Carthy's dad was adamant that his son should learn the trade first and bookmaking second, but Browne's sideline proved irresistibly attractive. 'As soon as I could, I got my bookmaking licence and by the time I was 19 I was working on the course and starting to build up the business.'

Clients began ringing up Carthy to have a bet in the evenings and outside racing hours and before long he was effectively running a bookmaking firm from one end of an accountant's office. Browne felt that wasn't quite right, 'so we opened a small betting shop and credit office of our own in the city. Paddy Power moved in four shops around us to try and close us down.' They didn't succeed. Discriminating punters with the means to invest rather more than €10 each way liked Chronicle's style and Carthy knew exactly the kind of service he wanted to offer them.

'I remember going over as a racegoer to the meetings like Cheltenham long before I was betting there, standing in the ring by the rails and looking up at people like Victor (Chandler). He'd always be wearing this beautiful dark brown overcoat and smart suit and tie. All his men would be in smart suits too and you'd see all the big punters congregating around them and all the big bets going down and I knew that's the kind of bookmaker I wanted to be. I'd still rather look at what Chandlers or Colin Webster are doing than at Hills, Ladbrokes or Coral.'

Suited and booted

You can see the Chandler influence on Carthy in everything from his sartorial panache to his roller-coaster trading on the rails and inevitably, just like VC, there have been times when his fearlessness has been tested to the limit. 'Cheltenham two years ago (2003) was a massacre for many bookies and the Wednesday was particularly bad. One punter had 25 grand each way with us at 9/1 on One Knight in the Sun Alliance Chase. Then Xenophon won and Liberman won and we ended the day £400,000 down. Normally I'd always go up and see Dermot at the end of each afternoon but that day I just couldn't face it. Then, just as I was leaving, he called me on the phone. "Well?" he said "How bad was it?" "It was terrible," I said and told him what we'd lost. "All right," he said, "just go back to the hotel and get yourself watered and fed and get a good night's sleep. Then meet me back here in the box at 10am tomorrow."

'When I got there the following day it was just Dermot and JP (McManus) in the box. I honestly thought I was going to get a bollocking but they were incredible. "We have had days like that on the stockmarket," they said, "but we want you to go back down there today, head up, no remorse and take them on bigger and stronger than ever".' Inspired, Carthy did, and finished the day £100,000 in front.

Chronicle's next move will be opening a luxurious new Dublin betting shop. It's going to be called the Sporting Emporium and, once again, the model appears to be Victor Chandler's flagship London shop behind the Dorchester Hotel.

You can picture it now. Chancers and mavericks. Bollinger and cigar smoke. Racing from Leopardstown, football from Stamford Bridge and golf from Sawgrass. A very Irish-coffee-flavoured gambling heaven.

It was hoped that the new club would be ready by early July, in which case no less a man than Tiger Woods was pencilled in for the grand opening. 'Dermot knows Tiger well,' confides Carthy, 'and he's coming over for the JP McManus Classic ten days before The Open.'

Unfortunately the Sporting Emporium is a few months behind schedule and will now open some time in the autumn. But given Desmond's incredible connections, it must be odds on that some other sporting or cinematic icon will be there to do the honours on Chronicle's and Justin Carthy's big night.