Horace Batchelor
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Horace Batchelor was famous in the UK during the late 1950s and early 1960s as an advertiser on Radio Luxembourg. The product he was selling was his "famous Infra-Draw Method", which was a system supposed to increase significantly the chances of winning large sums of money on the football pools. In the days before the National Lottery started in 1994, the "Pools" was the only means available for winning very large sums of money for very small stakes.
Radio Luxembourg was primarily a music station, playing the current single releases, focusing on the charts and the records currently being promoted by the record companies. The advertisers were allowed to buy a chunk of "air time", usually fifteen minutes in duration, or multiples of that. This was in contrast to commercial television in the UK, where advertisers had no influence over programme content, they had to pay for an advertisement to be aired during the programming organised by the television company. Horace Batchelor's programme segment usually featured the Deep River Boys, who were a gospel/barbershop group performing seemingly live, and not records. His advertisements were spoken, the voice purported to be that of the man himself. He invited listeners to write in for details of his "Amazing Infra-Draw Method" which he promised was able to predict drawn games which were otherwise unpredictable. The address he always read out as follows: "Horace Batchelor, Department One, Keynsham (spelt K-E-Y-N-S-H-A-M) Keynsham, Bristol". This was because the name of his base, the town of Keynsham between Bristol and Bath was not pronounced as spelt (cane-sham, not keen - sham).
Horace Batchelor's Radio Luxembourg programme led to Keynsham being regarded as something of a joke town for British people who used to listen to Radio Luxembourg at the time, and this reputation lingered. It was the reason why the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band named an album Keynsham.
There was some question as to the identity of Horace Batchelor and whether he was in fact a real person, as he lived out of the spotlight. However, he was well-known to his neighbours, and it is popularly supposed that he merited an obituary in The Times when he died in 1977. A former hotel (Longreach) newly converted into apartments in the neighbouring village of Saltford boasts Batchelor as a previous owner.
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