I don’t know Tom Waterhouse. I have never met him, been near him, or even seen him wandering down the street. Until recently, I didn’t know who he was, or what his family was (quasi) famous for. But today I hate him. He is the alpha and omega of my bile duct. The thorn in my side. The weeping ulcer between my cheek and lower jaw that refuses to heal. His grinning, punchable mug stares at me from my television screen, and it has infected my subconscious. And I don’t know how to make it stop.
My father was an engineer. His two brothers are engineers. Their father (and his father) and many of their children are engineers. Some of these engineers have been particularly successful, rising to prominence in the world of building large things that do stuff. It’s fair to say that my paternal genetics skew heavily to ‘being good at engineering’.
But I realised at a very early age that engineering was not for me. At the end of year ten physics I still failed to discern the difference between mass and weight (a negligence, incidentally, I have since rectified). So, instead i studied economics and the arts. Seemed like a sensible decision.
This would not have been my life direction if I was Tom Waterhouse. Had I been, my general approach to adulthood and career would have involved sleeping through university, arriving at the door of Downer EDI and insisting that because my relatives going back into the distant past could cobble together a half decent blueprint for a bridge that they should undoubtedly employ me post-haste.
Waterhouse is attempting to parley his family heritage at setting profit-making odds for mug punters or training large mammals to run fast while bearing a diminutive, whip-toting pilot into a suave, 21st century gambling empire. The bulk of this is done through plastering every sporting event in the world with his plastic, smirking mug via any medium possible.
Watching ads for tomwaterhouse.com.au is the worst thing that anyone can do.
The detestable little pustule even roped his poor mum into the ad to try to give him some kind of credibility, even though she is not actually a bookmaker but a horse trainer. This is pretty much like applying for a job as a RBA economist, then offering your qualifications as ‘my mum taught a TAFE course in household budgeting’.
He also decides to trot around the betting ring toting a big white bag with his name on it, clearly forgetting the number one lesson of stranger danger – children (and adults with the stature and appearance of pre-pubescent polo players) should NOT go out in public with clothing and accessories which have your name on it. Should Tom be abducted by a lolly-bearing murderess, it will deprive me of the possibility that, one day, I will be able to punch him in the face.
In essence, the Tom Waterhouse pitch is thus:
Some people to whom I am related have a history of taking money of people under the mistaken impression that they have knowledge about something that is effectively a crapshoot. In particular, the womb that I squelched out of 30 years ago has some tangential relationship to gambling. Therefore if you give me money to bet, you will lose less of it.
Never mind the fact that if reprehensible arsehat actually does have any greater understanding of how gambling works, it would be in his interests to offer odds that are MORE likely to make you lose so he can increase his profits. The ads he puts together give the distinct indication that his services will provide you with some kind of insight – some assistance to make you a more effective gambler. Looking at the site indicates that he is a bookie. A bookie with a solipsistic fetish for slathering all of his communications with that eminently, eminently punchable face.
The man has polluted my sports viewing for too long. I am an innocent man. I have done nothing in my life that warrants the sentence of having to see Tom Waterhouse superimposing his dwarflike self into a bunch of athletes looking athletic while trying to look cool. I don’t want to give him my money. I don’t want anyone to give him money. I want him to go away, to go home, sit in his bedroom with his posters of Bart Cummings and just live off his mum’s winnings. I just want someone to punch him.
So scroll back up to the top. Look at that face. And maintain the rage.
Shouting at the Void 