"Fearless" Freddie Williams, arguably the last of the old school bookmakers has died aged 65.

Williams suffered a fatal heart attack after returning home from standing at Shawfield Greyhound stadium and Ayr races on Saturday.
He was born in Cunnock, a small coal-mining town in East Ayrshire in 1942, to a mining family.

Had it not been for a pelvic disease which confined him to bed for three years he would have ended up down the mines himself.
  
Eventually he went to work for a soft drink company called Currys in nearby Auchinleck.

Freddie's love of a betting was shared by his workmates, most of whom studied the racing form each day.

The workforce went on buy-out of the business and profit he made enabled him to buy his first bookmaking pitch at Ayr in 1974, and later at Hamilton and Musselburgh.

By 1991 he was a millionaire, and he went on to open his own bottled-water business called Caledonian Clear.

1998 was a very memorable year for Williams, first of all he had a triple-heart-bypass operation and just a few weeks later he successfully bid £90,000 for the number-two Tattersalls pitch at Cheltenham. Achieving a lifetimes ambition in the process.

His “battles” with Irish layer and owner JP McManus are legendary.

At the 1999 Festival he took on Nick Dundee, the Irish banker of the week, in the Sun Alliance Chase. Freddie didn't fancy the horse at all.

He told the story:-

'I was going 11/8,' he says. 'One fellow came up and wanted £80,000 on, and I laid it to him, but I didn't take down the price afterwards. He looked at me for a moment and looked around at his friends, and then asked for the bet again. So I laid him another £110,000 to £80,000, but I still didn't take down the price.'

The horse was very much in contention approaching the third last but Nick Dundee's legs gave way on landing.

However the layer wasn’t always so lucky and McManus won some big bets.

McManus had a winning bet of £200,000 at 5/2 on a horse of Jonjo O'Neill's called An Muine Muice at Newbury

On the first day of the 2002 Festival the McManus-owned Like A Butterfly won by a neck carrying £100,000 of the owners money.

In 2006 the layer had a very bad day at the office when at Cheltenham, after losing £925,000 to his great adversary in just two bets, he was robbed of all his takings (£70,000) when returning to his hotel after racing.

Writing on The Racing Forum internet site, layer Barry Dennis described Williams as “a throw back to the big rollers of the 40’s and 50’s”

He went on to describe his loss as “the end of the betting ring legends, his like will never be seen again.”