His first national exposure came when guiding viewers of BBC Grandstand through how to place a bet on the Grand National, and then tipping the big race winner Seagram to a 10m audience.

In 1993 he left Ladbrokes to become the public face of Coral. While there he helped to create an enduring image of that firm as being, in the words of one Racing Post columnist writing this year, 'the one major bookmaker who you (almost) don’t mind losing money to.'

After three years with Coral, Hartnett was poached to oversee a radical change in the image of the Tote. As part of a new management team, it was a time of great change at the state owned bookmaker and pool operator.

An early baptism of fire was held on familiar territory however as Hartnett was the senior Tote man at Aintree when a bomb scare forced evacuation of the course and postponement of the race.

Deprived of communication by a police blackout he had to assist in finding beds for over 200 Tote staff, securing almost £1M in cash on the racecourse, ruling on how bets were to be dealt with on the biggest day of the year, planning the rescheduling of the race 2 days later, finding the passport of a major punter forced to leave it in a private box and conduct over 40 interviews with media from around the world.

When the race was rerun, he had to sprint half a mile from an entrance gate where he was negotiating the admission of a Securicor van, to the winners enclosure where he was interviewed about the staff member who had walked off the racecourse with over £20,000 hidden in an intimate item of her clothing, and then handed it over to her manager!

Hartnett left the Tote in 2001 when he returned to Ireland with BETDAQ – the betting exchange. He continues to adopt a high profile within the betting industry, challenging many of the aspersions cast by former colleagues over this new addition to the gambling fold, and overseeing the company’s growth from launch in September 2001 to annualized turnover in 2003 of nearly $1bn.

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