Strolling carefree and barefoot in the jungle, two men stumble upon a tiger. As the blood drains from their faces, one immediately bends down to put on his shoes. "Why are you doing that, you can't out-run him," one asks the other. "I know," the now-shod man says. "I just have to out-run you."

A standup comedian's best? No, credit to Ed Wray, the founder of Betfair, the internet person-to-person betting exchange, who delivered the punch line at a lunch with him I hosted for members of the Royal Automobile Club. Actually, a sense of humour is a prerequiste for measured gambling. Sometimes, you have got to laugh at your luck.

Incidentally, for my book on Betfair (You Bet: The Betfair Story, how two men changed the world of gambling) I interviewed Ed for hours. Not one joke, including even this one which at the lunch he used skillfully to make a point about markets and competition. Of course, timing is everything.