Fearless Freddie

Fearless Freddie Williams BBC One Scotland 1900BST, Wednesday 19 April Available on Channel 971 for digital satellite viewers outside Scotland

When legendary Scots' bookmaker "Fearless" Freddie Williams steps into the betting ring, punters know the annual Cheltenham Racing Festival has started in earnest.

Wide-eyed novice gamblers and shrewd big betters alike flock to his pitch, keen to take on the last of the old school bookies.

Always ready for the gamble, Williams - wearing his trademark Stetson and raincoat - never disappoints them.

Whether it's a massive wager at Cheltenham or a £5 bet at a greyhound track in Glasgow, his enthusiasm never falters.

They call him 'Fearless' because he goes where other bookies fear to tread, regularly taking £100,000 bets from currency trader and racing tycoon, JP McManus. By a horse's neck, a million pounds is won or lost.

Williams is no stranger to risk and danger. Growing up in a tough south Ayrshire mining community, a pelvic disease confined the would-be bookie to a hospital bed for three years.

Leaving school at 15, with no certificates but plenty of ambition, he started work in the local lemonade factory sweeping the floor and running errands.

He also developed an interest in bookmaking and eventually opened his first shop.

By 1992, he had made enough to buy over the lemonade factory and his Caledonian Bottlers factory is now one of the biggest employers in a job-starved area. In 1998, Freddie underwent triple by-pass heart surgery.

The night before this year's Cheltenham Gold Cup, he faced his biggest ordeal when he was the victim of a terrifying robbery as he returned from an already bad day at the office, having lost £900,000 to his old adversary, McManus, in just two bets.

But, in the week of the Scottish National meeting at Ayr, Fearless Freddie Williams remains a man who relishes a gamble no matter the odds.