ANYTHING can happen and there’s nothing you can do about it. You can be either a short head away from ecstasy or the complete opposite. It’s unpredictable, but it’s just something that’s in my blood.”

For Carl Harris, horse racing is his life. But it’s not just a passion, or a hobby; it’s his occupation. Carl is a professional gambler – a man who makes his living from knowing which thoroughbreds will win, and which will lose.

It’s a job fraught with difficulties – and one that requires total concentration and attention to detail. But Carl, who lives near Pocklington, East Yorkshire, wouldn’t have it any other way.

“I love horses and I love racing,” he said.

“The rewards are there but, similarly, so are the pitfalls. Some people think it’s an easy job. I wish it was but, in reality, it’s never been harder.”

Armed with a subscription to Racing UK and At The Races, with computer access to form and the betting exchanges, a host of monitors and screens and a notebook filled with vital clues picked up from other contests, Carl goes to work.

“The best thing is just to watch racing,” he added. “I watch every race, either live or on re-runs on the racing channels. You are looking for particulars with this – how a horse ran last time out. You are looking at the race distance – was the horse finishing well? Did the horse get the run of the race?

“You also have to look at the form. Is the stable doing well? There are a million and one things, but the most important in gambling is the going and how horses work on the ground.

“However, there is no set formula, no one single factor. Every horse is different and you need a good network of people to speak to – people who are in the know.

“Although I don’t have a huge number of monster gambles, I make sure that when I do go to the races, I watch the horses in the paddock.”

Winning is a must for Carl – because as well as backing horses himself, he also tips them on specialist phone lines

“The rewards are there but, similarly, so are the pitfalls. Some people think it’s an easy job. I wish it was but, in reality, it’s never been harder”

to hundreds of customers through his company Naughty Diesel.

After spotting a gap in the market, Carl set up his tipping line on a pay-as-you-win basis. So his telephone clients pay only a flat £10 fee when the tipster gets his selections spot on.

“I actually set up my company, Naughty Diesel, with something else in mind at first. My daughter, who is now seven, loved Thomas the Tank Engine and used to call everyone Naughty Diesel, so the name just stuck,” he added.

“It continued for the Viking Racing Club – to give people an interest and a share in racing at an affordable price. We bought a couple of horses and we were lucky because Bailieborough started winning pretty much straight away.

“That got people interested – winning always gets you noticed – and I wanted to expand those services. We started Telewin, which provides betting information, and looked at how other services worked.

“I discovered there was a big opportunity in the market. When you speak to people, they are happy with tipping lines when everything is going well but aren’t when they’re not.

“I basically wanted to say to customers ‘look, I do this for a living and if I don’t back you a winner I don’t get paid’. So we said to customers ‘you can pay us when you win’. I charge £10 for a winning tip and nothing if it loses.

“It has been so difficult this year. The weather has completely affected the going and, of course, racing is much more competitive than it used to be. There are more short-priced favourites being beaten than ever before and there is so much more racing. “But we’ve been back in the groove recently and have just had eight winning naps (best bets of the day) in a row, so everything is going really well at the moment.” Carl provides a weekly podcast, Turftalk, which looks at big race meetings and also has a premium professional service for those punters who want to bet a bit bigger.

What all this means is that Carl is a very busy man indeed. “It’s very hard work and it’s a real rollercoaster life. It is definitely not a nine-to-five job. You are studying the form, following the market movers and that really goes on from morning right through until night.

“Some days it can be fantastic. Other days it can be an absolute nightmare – but I love it.”