This film is part of Free
The quirks of a whippet race, with novices in winklepickers learning from the old hands, all fully elucidated in broad West Yorkshire dialect.
From the collection of:
Shipley amateur cine filmmaker Eric Hall reveals once again his knack of capturing perfectly a typical local custom as practiced in 1968. The film is worth watching just for Eric’s wry commentary, in his broadest Yorkshire accent, but it also wonderfully shows behind the scenes at a day’s whippet racing in West Yorkshire. Another interesting facet of the film is that it was made when the whippet community divided over racing pedigree or non-pedigree dogs.
Eric Hall had been making films documenting the local customs, people and places of Yorkshire since 1929. He was at one time Chairman of the North East Region of the Institute of Amateur Cinematographers and President of Bradford Cine Circle. Four years earlier than this one he made another excellent award winning film about the declining game of Knur and Spell, ‘Ower Bit Bog Oil’. Whippet racing is still alive and well and appears to have changed little in the intervening years. The British Whippet Racing Association was formed in 1967, but because it wouldn’t agree just to race pedigree dogs – some had been interbred with the larger greyhounds – the Whippet Club Racing Association was formed in 1968.
