PaddyPower pays out for Gore's Prius joyride

Sins of the father?

By Burke Hansen, 8th July 2007

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House of Cards Irish bookmaker PaddyPower.com has paid out $13,600 on 14-1 odds that Al Gore would be the next celebrity arrested.

PaddyPower, the leading fixed-odds bookmaker in Ireland, has made something of a name for itself on the Emerald Isle by offering bizarre and entertaining betting options for its customers, but this one bizarrely turned on the company, the New York Post reports.

Typically customers are the ones to get burned on these celebrity or current event bets, because the true odds are considerably longer than those being offered by the house, but this is the rare one that paid out for the gamblers.

PaddyPower had failed to specify which Al Gore they meant - father or son. So, when Al Gore III got pulled over for doing 100mph in his Prius - they really go that fast? - and the arresting officers found weed and some prescription drugs for which Gore the Younger could proffer up no prescription, the lucky gamblers hurriedly claimed their winnings.

Of course, paying out wasn't a bad idea for PaddyPower - the publicity garnered by the payout has been worth considerably more than $13,600. And that's really the point of these bets, isn't it? ®

Burke Hansen, attorney at large, heads a San Francisco law office

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Posted Monday 9th July 2007 15:10 GMT

Paul

Re: Dust to dust

Hands up anyone who can recognise a troll when they see one?

Posted Monday 9th July 2007 14:28 GMT

Brett Brennan

Paris Hilton angle?

I wonder if Al Jr. Jr. will get the same pokey time as Ms. Hilton, of, as is more often the case in Tennessee, be released "on his own recognizance" and have the sentence reduced to "community service" (fulfilled, no doubt, by working on Dad's green publicity programs).

The Gores are a very sore spot with the residents of the Volunteer State, being well known there for "bending" laws to assist their political ambitions.

I think the poor Prius is the victim here...maybe a new Volkswagen advert (along the lines of the Teddy Kennedy advert* from the '70's) could be adopted:

"If Al Gore Jr. Jr. were driving a Volkswagen, he'd be home today."

* - The original spoof advert in the "National Lampoon" had the tag line "If Ted Kennedy had been driving a Volkswagen, he'd be President today", and showed the famous graphic of a Beetle floating in a pond...

Posted Monday 9th July 2007 13:42 GMT

Dave Wood

Re: Dust to Dust

While personally I think most current hybrids a bit pointless, the CNWMR report is hilariously biased against the Prius, both on assumptions about usage/maintenance and about distribution of energy usage throughout a typical manufacture/usage life cycle. See http://www.pacinst.org/topics/integrity_of_science/case_studies/hummer_vs_prius.pdf which although in itself may be biased (it is from a left-leaning org), it does highlight a significant number of concerns about the quality of data used in the CNWMR report. I’m not saying that I think that the Prius is even a particularly good solution, but just that maybe those quoting this report should actually read it and look a little deeper rather than just blindly quoting it.