BETTING ON SERMONS.

Auckland Star, Volume LXI, Issue 161, 10 July 1930, Page 9

BETTING ON SERMONS.

DIVERSION AT CAMBRIDGE. STUDENTS' WEEKLY " SWEEPSTAKES." LENGTH IS WAGER BASIS. Oxford has its Balloon Club for bored undergraduates of means, but Cambridge offers its jaded students diversion with profit in the Sunday sermons "Sweepstakes" now becoming famous. In this greatest derby of its kind the pastors of the twelve local churches and some of the best-known divines in England who occasionally preach there are pitted against one another on the basis of the length of their sermons. The uui- w versity community contains many sportsmen necessarily turned churchgoers by the circumstances that no weekend holidays are permitted during term time, and the clientele of the sweepstakes is estimated at several hundred. The rooms of one of the organisers are the centre of the operations. There charts showing the records of past performances stud the walls and there bets ranging from two to ten shillings may be placed until 11 o'clock every Sunday on any one of the morning's preachers. And from there the "official timers," two of whom are delegated to each church, go out nervously clutching their stop watches. Following developments over several weeks, the. event has become a handicap affair,-the-winner being the man whose pastor preaches the longest beyond the estimated time. Great care lias been given to the calculation of the handicaps, and there are "dopestes" and "tipsters" who regularly "clean up" as a result of having studied the ministers' temperaments and their performance charts. The sweepstakes recently trembled on the brink of bankruptcy when the curate who substituted for a long shot and on whom bets were allowed at regular min-isters'-rates set a new record by pi ins' for fifty-six minutes. Now rme. the shortest ■ recorded lasted nine I minutes.