Norman Hackett (Norman Wisdom) works in a jewellery shop and desperately wants to impress Anne (Jill Dixon) who works in a dress shop across the road. He gets upset when bookmaker Richard Lumb (Leslie Phillips) and his personal assistant Miss Daviot (Delphi Lawrence) buy the same necklace he had in mind for Anne. After the ruby in the necklace is altered for a diamond Norman has to deliver it to the bookmakers office where he explains that he wanted to buy the necklace for his sweetheart but couldn't afford it. The bookmakers suggest that he places a £1 accumulator on a particular jockey's mounts to try and win a large sum of money and offers up top jockey Eddie Diamond as the obvious choice. After several bungled attempts Norman finally manages to get hold of a £1 and places the bet on Eddie's six mounts at Goodwood over the next few days. The winners start to come in one by one but can the impossible actually happen and even then will the bookmakers pay out such a large sum?

Norman Wisdom is one of my all-time favourite comedy actors and there are numerous scenes in this film which are very funny and cringeworthy at the same time including the shenanigans in the cinema with Phoebe (Joan Sims), trying to get through to the bookmakers on the office phone, pretending to be a foreigner to gain entry into Goodwood racecourse, the hospital scene after he is supposed to have swallowed a bottle of pills and creating a nuisance at the start of the final race in his accumulator. Jill Dixon and Delphi Lawrence provide the eye candy in the film and it's also great to see the 'Lord of Love' Leslie Phillips feature heavily as the suave bookmaker Richard Lumb. Carry on specialist Joan Sims also appears as Norman's wannabe girlfriend Phoebe and the two elderly ladies in the film Majorie Rhodes (Norman's mum) and Margaret Rutherford (Mrs Dooley) acted superbly. Edward Chapman was fantastic as Norman's no-nonsense boss Mr. Stoneway - he appeared in many of the Wisdom films as "Mr Grimsdale" - and we also get a brief glimpse of Jerry Desmonde in the racing crowd, another actor who featured heavily in the Wisdom films . A special mention to Ballard Berkley (the Major from Fawlty Towers) who appears as the starter at Goodwood races - "Morning Fawlty".

There is one short scene at the beginning of the film showing the finish of a horse race at Hurst Park and then there is plenty of footage of Goodwood racecourse as Eddie Diamond starts to fire in the winners. There are a couple of close-up scenes where Eddie is riding a pretend horse but it actually looks very realistic compared to similar shots in The Rainbow Jacket. I particularly like the shots towards the end of the film where Norman is hanging on the starting gates as the horses start to race down the track towards the stands. The fact the movie is filmed in black and white, when so many around the time were being made in colour, just adds more character and charm for me.

Every gambler dreams of hitting the jackpot and that's why this film is so likeable as you can drift off into a fantasy world. imagining yourself in Norman's shoes and thinking how you would spend the winnings if the bet came in. The storyline, comedy, love interest and racing action all blend seamlessly to create a wonderful movie that has to be my favourite racing film of all time - Norman Wisdom at his best! (Rating 10/10)