Seventeen years after winning the BBC's Superstars and Mastermind programmes in the same week, John Thomas, Britain's answer to the American sports hero Lee Remmick, walked triumphantly from a Winchester court today, after finally winning his long-running legal battle with chapmion jockey, Jon Champion.
In 1986, Thomas was a household name, as famous as Wendy Craig and Peter Beardsley and enjoyed some of the most lucrative sponsorship contracts in the sporting world. His exclusive deal with Amstrad was reported to be worth at least a satellite dish and probably a multi-purpose television and phone after about ten years.
Following a chance meeting with Champion at a Pot Black champion of champions event, Thomas agreed to promote Champion's new enterprise, a naming-your-horse-after-members-of-your-family business, under strict conditions laid out by Thomas's laywer, David Jason. Those conditions included things like' there being some money in it' and 'you not getting cancer again' etc.
In 1995, the couple split acrimoniously and all combined assets were frozen, but Champion said he wanted his horse back, and started legal proceedings against Thomas to make it all official. Thomas initially agreed to the request, but upon finding that his lawyer, Jason, had used the horse as a prop in an ITV police drama and that it was 'knackered', he pretended to be deaf, so the case came to court.
The case took ages and the horse died, but seizing the opportunity to get his name in the paper, Thomas went on all sorts of daytime talk shows, openly discussing the case and constantly refering to his long forgotten televisual sport episodes. I was the only one at court and only because I'd been thrown out of a murder case for leering.
Thomas lives in Bourton-on-the-Water and was called 'Fanny' at school.
