John Mort Green - The Butterfly and his 10 Commandments!
- Bruce Clark
- 1 day ago
- 8 min read
Racing can almost be a religious experience. And ecumenical with it, filled by the strongly devoted, with piety running deep. Some see it as an explanation for life itself.
Disciples come in all stripes, and their sacred books are wildly varied, from the King James version of Best Bets or the dearly departed Sportsman, all filled with revelations of how to live the just and much fulfilled punting life.
Which is how I take you, fellow brethren, as racing heads to its most famous race this weekend, the Epsom Derby, to my dear old friend, John Mort Green or better known as by his own appointed moniker: “The Butterfly”.
You will note the Derby link shortly, 61 years since Sea Bird’s famous win on the Downs, still rated as one of the Classic race’s best, and the very kindling beneath the flowery Butterfly story.
Mort may never have been spotted in liturgical vestments, though he did turn up before the stuffy Queensland Turf Club committee dressed splendidly as an Arab Sheik, like Laurence Of Arabia, handing out Christmas cards as he was disqualified for 10 months as a scapegoat over the Fine Cotton Affair which allowed him a North American cruise holiday - as you do.
He had a substantial commission for Fine Cotton at Eagle Farm in the First Commerce Novice back in 1984, but also had had $500 of his own on it just to place, noting his own commandment: "I have read the Holy Bible, cover to cover, 11 times, and pray every night, please God save me from tomorrow's good thing.”
Of course, Fine Cotton’s disqualification started a hellish experience for Mort. Fact was, I saw Mort leading the robust chant of “ring-in” soon after the race as pandemonium broke out.
Mort was some character; he would run rings around self-appointed social media prophets of today.
Pellham Books published his 1969 book “Come Fly with the Butterfly—The Secrets of Successful Punting” where his timeless "Ten Commandments" were first delivered.
He wrote: “My background has given me a few furlongs start on anybody else in the satisfying professions of relieving affluent bookmakers of their money made from mugs.”
“I also became a trainer and rode in trotting races so that I was familiar with every facet of the racing industry.”
The Butterfly had many wings and wider tentacles. An original in every way.
And remember we are times when phones were pay or rotary, contact books were relationships, television had just gone colour, not subscription, and races were followed on transistor radios. Well before discs went floppy, a podcast would have been to go fishing. Sectional times were how to fill out a robust day.
It was an era ripe for individualism, and there was none more individual than The Butterfly, who would become a treasured mentor later in his life. There is no better time to remember him now.
It was said in the interest of filling his own plates, Mort would have made love with The Devil, but there was something of the Good Samaritan in him, like in his old 0055 line (remember those, pay by the second), when Father Mort would regale a few lines of fake scripture:
“Today’s lesson is Corinthians Chapter 2 Verse 12. “Let me repeat that,” which meant that the hot Butterfly mail of the day was Race 2 horse 12. Those were the days.
Which is to lead you to think that The Butterfly (or Papillon as he was known in France), was an interesting character of the turf, and in the week of the Epsom Derby, his greatest coup will be revealed and reprised.
How is it then The Butterfly, a tall skinny son of Tom, a Kedron Park bookmaker (suitably to this tale, they were mostly unregistered meetings held in Brisbane) was once labelled by “without doubt the best professional gambler on horses in the world today” (by Sport Illustrated.)
Mort would live a Gatsby-like lifestyle in England in the Swinging Sixties while becoming a confidant of jockeys and horse players as well as those who rumbled in high society. For the Butterfly there was a chauffeur-driven Rolls Royce to the track, a Mayfair restaurant for dinner and a Soho show afterwards.
As he wrote in his biography: "The professional punter must ease himself into the right circles. He does not have to like people. All he has to do is live with the people."
America’s Sports Illustrated magazine published a 5000-word feature on the Butterfly across 10 pages in their August 1965 edition highlighting “The Happy Hunter of Ally Pally” where they followed his adventures at the Alexandra Palace racetrack and how he made a living as a professional punter earning some £200 a week.
Mort was considered such a story that it was left to John Olsen to compile it, the John Olsen who wrote more than 30 books that sold 33 million copies, from about Cassius Clay to Italian partisans in World War II to the Chappaquiddick scandal. Mort was some story.
Eventually he penned his own: Come Fly with the Butterfly, published in 1969 by Pellham books, now almost impossible to track down, but as robust as relevant today, even in its 1995 reprint.
Try finding it? The National Library of Australia has but one copy of the 1995 Sporting Garland Press reprint and it is “not to be loaned” except for perusal in the reading room.
I find Arc Books, in British Columbia Canada strangely with a copy, but on delving, they hold it on behalf of Barclays Books, from York in Western Australia, housed in the old fire station. We negotiated in Aussie dollars, and despite Australia Post’s best endeavours to lose it, my version arrived in near showroom condition.
And now to the Butterfly’s Ten Commandments (for successful punting), revealed in tablet form circa 1969.
The Butterfly never lacked belief or confidence, you can tell, as those Commandments can stand today, just as those other ones abut adultery, perjury and theft do. Not sure about "false idols."
As he wrote of himself: “Because I find it an interesting subject, but also so that you can appreciate the kind of make-up necessary for a man to become a successful professional. My advice is to block your ears with their old lace and take notice of me, John Mort Green, a professional punter with good looks and good sense and a damned good bank balance.”
His publisher Richard Onslow wrote of Come Fly with The Butterfly: “We present this book to you as it was written some 29 years ago—1969. It is a classic of the turf written by an absolute maestro and classic should not be meddled with. The advice contained in this book cannot be better.”
Mort was from my hometown of Brisbane, ambitions of a veterinary career were thwarted by disappointing exam results and that fatherly advice suggested he was “too frightened to be a thief and too tall to work in newspapers” and any future in horses would lead to a life of poverty.”
Mort would head to England to create a lifestyle that suited the sixties and his own persona. His talent was relationships.
“If they operated on me, they’d find a stomach full of ears,” was how he described it one of his favourite sayings, meaning, he would count jockeys—Hutchinson R, Pyers W, Mercer J, Williamson W, as he would call them—as his confidants. (I saw it first-hand as we took Duffield G’s bags into an Irish Derby at The Curragh without tickets but found the best of seats - naturally. Clark B he would call me.
But it is The Butterfly’s Derby Coup that is legendary and envelopes his persona, no myths.
Sea Bird was the pop-star three-year-old of Europe of the 1965 season in France, winning five and never expected to challenge in the Derby, until The Butterfly had a phone call - reverse charges he says in the book.
“At your service I replied, " Speak up though, I don't want anything to have to be repeated at GPO prices.”
The secret was out, well known only then to The Butterly but this was The Butterfly's modus operandi - information, listening relationships and then the execution.
Whether it was from Glennon P (Pat Glennon the Australian jockey) or Pyers W, he would never reveal, but there was a discrete call to the West End flat of The Butterfly saying Epsom was on.
“Get off the line, I’ve got to ring up a bookie and order myself a fortune,” was Mort’s quote.
“This time was the bet of the century. I continued to back the bird with every piece of bread-and-butter money made from day-to-day betting,” he said.
“I even cut down on the style of cufflinks I wore at playtime so that I could lay out even more on the only bird of real class in my life at the time.”
And there was another change from the normally stylish garb: ''It was vitally important not to alert the bookmakers, so I went around countless betting shops [dressed like a cleaner] never investing more than £8 in any outlet. (Even then larger bets had to be referred to head office to get a clearance.) ''I would go back sometimes if the counter staff had changed. Got plenty of 20-1.”
Sea Bird started at 7-4 and walked in. (He'd win the Arc de Triomphe later that year in world record time, the first to complete the double.) Imagine getting 20-1! Sea Bird remains the second highest rated horse of all time with Timeform, his 145 rating only eclipsed by Frankel's 147.
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The Butterfly worked through most of the £23,000 winnings (more than $300,000 today) on a round-the-world cruise on the Queen Mary.
But The Butterfly would always return to Brisbane which is where I’d meet with him on the track and after every Saturday, there were familiar get togethers, at his East Brisbane home, with braised brisket the standard fare for invited guests.
When he was with his English rose, Rosemary, in Vigo Village in County Kent, he’d send VHS videos weekly of racing highlights and cut stories of interests from The Racing Post and other sporting newspapers and forward them.
These were different times, no internet, no access but Mort was my voice for an eager learner.
Always offers of European holidays in villas of owners unknown, but in Europe he’d ensure entry to a French Derby with a handshake of a few Francs and the best of days.
At home, with Cripple Frankie, Big Betting Brian, Big Red, Fat Jack, The Milkman (or son of), Sully (that’s Michael Sullivan of SportingBet, BlueBet lineage), Fletch, Jack “Miss World” Honey, retired politicians, Mort, most Saturday nights were legendary experiences before heading back to ensure the final newspaper columns were not just right but interesting. You may sense that they were.
But as The Butterfly’s wings slowly were clipped and life in England was to be his final flights, he’d never stopped sending VHS tapes and clippings.
And a final note that said, in typical Mort style: “I ran my race and finished out of the money.”
FROM "Come fly with the Butterfly"
On Derby Day: "Personally, when I go to Epsom on Derby Day I take my own bar with me, it is all in the boot of my Rolls Royce, guarded even more than her virtue by my chauffeur.”
On England: “When I first came to Britain, the bookmakers thought I was pantomime. They saw me flitting around on my toes ann over the ring in coloured hats and thought that I was just a big skinny comic, not to be taken seriously at all.”
On Jockeys: "Some jockeys are so crooked they cannot even lie in bed straight. Others have the intelligence of a demented pigmy. Neither species ever carry The Butterfly's money.
On bookmakers: “There are two kinds of bookmakers - the bad and the worst. I should know because I was once one myself and so was my father.”
On himself: "All these barons and earls and marchionesses and countesses and duchess are flitting around, carving their initials in the Queen Anne furniture, all stoned out of tiny minds with their diamonds dangling in their cocktails and that is when they start telling their little secrets. As The Butterfly flits around the room titillating Countess Flossie with his fund of Queensland sheep-shearing jokes, he hears sensational snippets like ' she's going to be giving it to him this year."
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