He’s one of my closest friends and has been for over twenty years. Whenever we meet, whether in Melbourne where he and wife Andrea and their two boys live, or when they visit Hong Kong, there are always freewheeling lunches and dinners and where it’s always so easy to see that John Didham is a very rare species who walked away from the racing game at the top of his career as a jockey.
He knows the ins and outs of how things work without having to let everyone know that he does, and bowed out at the right time after stints as champion jockey in Macau, which was still a Portuguese enclave back then and great fun to get over there.
The decision to leave Macau was probably because he could see the writing on the wall. Maybe he saw the future of racing, didn’t like what he saw from a long term point of view and knew that his priority was family.
I don’t remember how I first met John Didham, but there he was suddenly in Macau in 1996 riding horses owned by myself and my best friend Norman Cheng at a time when we were running Universal and then EMI Music in the region.
Norman was far more clued up on certain aspects of the racing game like hanging out at gentleman’s club Aspinall’s in London with bloodstock agents whereas because of how the dice landed, I learned about perhaps the more unsavoury things about horse racing.
As for John Didham, dubbed “the Magic Man” by then racing writer and good friend Lawrence Wadey, he and Irishman Robbie Burke were the most successful riders at the time in Macau.
Of course, there are very different definitions of “success” and the Magic Man was able to balance his ability to win and read the play with family always coming first.
Through my job in music, he and the few friends we had in racing met people like David Bowie, the Stones, Norah Jones, Diana Krall, Maurice Gibb of the Bee Gees etc.
Our regular lunches at the restaurants California in Lan Kwai Fong and the excellent Wyndham Street Thai were legendary- legendary because of their incredible lasting power and never knowing where they might end. While John quietly feasted on just about everything on the menu- somewhat unusual for a jockey- the table would morph into something like the Godfather’s office with many dropping by to talk about this and that. Johnno never stopped eating and with nothing said escaping him. He was a likeable Keyser Soze. He would glance my way at times and raise his eyebrows when hearing something particularly daft, and knowing that the game of a cat playing with a dying cockroach was going on. I needed the comic relief. Around 6pm, lunch would make way for dinner and take in the Canadian band playing at TOTTs in the Excelsior Hotel. These long days journeys would hammer on until 2am. John would take the ferry back to Macau, I would go into the office in the morning and shuffle around some papers. On the way home, I would call John who would carefully jog my memory bank as to how the night before had progressed and digressed or how badly it had bombed and those who had become somewhat offended at things said. It didn’t matter. Everything was repeated the next day and with John riding his usual quota of winners. Those closest to him in Macau were jockeys MJ Odendaal, Sammy Hyland and Harry Troy, and trainers Joe Lau and Bill Tung Biu.
“Uncle” Bill had been a huge television celebrity because of his often unhinged on-air criticism of what he saw as being “the Australian gang” operating in Hong Kong. Throw in a couple of Englishmen into that mix. Bill Tung threw his considerable support behind John. He was powerful and he kept the wolves and their washing machines running the Macau Jockey Club away from trying to control the Magic Man.
After winning three Macau jockey championship titles during two different stints there and knowing when enough was enough and family priorities coming into play, he returned to race riding in Melbourne for trainers including John Simon and Sheila Laxton and David Hayes. It was a successful time in a low-key way before asked to run the Victoria Racing apprentice scheme.
This didn’t work out. Racing executives thought they knew better. Nothing has changed.
John, son of Melbourne Cup winning jockey Midge Didham, below, having made some savvy investments in property, wasn’t hurting for money.
These days, he is enjoying life and having the time to learn things that have come on stream during these days of the new abnormal. We speak practically every day and catch up on anything and everything. He knows that I have never considered myself a “racing writer” despite some years ago producing the warts and all Racingb*tch column. I have always kept my distance about getting knee deep in the politics of the horse racing world. We both see what’s perhaps wrong with the game- integrity issues aside, the question of economics and sustainability plus knowing that the gambling albatross flying around horse racing will always be problematic when it comes to attracting a mainstream audience. Still, there have been some very important life lessons to be taken away from horse racing involving trust, honesty, recognising the cultural and lifestyle differences of every racing jurisdiction, how one size doesn’t fit all, and gaining a sixth sense about people and things. This helps one to not only read the play, but also how to rewrite the script.
Fascinating stuff... #johndidham #horseracing #macau #hongkong #magicman #midgedidham
