It's the biggest night of the year at Perth's Gloucester Park harness racing track and I provide the random quote above - uttered by an old bloke munching hot chips, who spies me taking photographs - to give some indication of what Steve "Millsy" Mills has got himself into.

Approaching the age of 54, the long-time Radio 6PR Breakfast host hasn't only decided to take on a second job, he's elected to become a bookmaker: a certifiably dying art and one of the few occupations in which customers have little sympathy if the proprietor goes home bleeding financially.

So far, Millsy's month-long journey as a bookie has taken him to Albany and Wagin, at meetings where a few hundred people might constitute a good crowd and $200 a big bet.

But tonight at Gloucester Park is a step into an all-together a bigger league. Not only is it Millsy' metropolitan bookmaking debut, it's the night of the WA Pacing Cup, when a crowd of 10,000-plus will flow through the turnstiles and a sizeable wager might be for an amount larger than he would like to contemplate.

"If I can go home with what I started with, I'll be happy. If I lose my house, well, I won't be so happy," Millsy says.

"I've probably spent three days doing form for this. And I've got some advice from people I trust. Really, I know I'm a novice and, to be honest, I didn't expect to be here [on WA Pacing Cup night] this quick. But it's a great opportunity.

"Bookmaking is just something that I always had an aspiration to do. I tossed up between that and buying a business and I figured I'd do this while the chance was there.

"I've been around it [bookmaking] a lot of my life and I had an uncle who was a bookie. It's always fascinated me from when I was a kid and used to see the old bookies engaging with the punters and writing on the tickets in crayons."

Much has changed since Millsy's uncle was a satchel swinger.

Millsy, for instance, is satchel-less and the crayons have long since been replaced by computer-generated tickets (indeed, the first 10 minutes of Millsy's evening will be devoted to trying to ensure his laptop will "talk" to the electronic board behind him that will display his prices).

And then there is the fact there are fewer bookies around these days. So few in fact, that a woman will walk within metres of Millsy's stand tonight and enquire (seemingly without irony) of her male companion: "they don't have bookies here, do they?"

"Millsy's the only new bookmaker we've had come in during the past few years, so far as I know," Don Martin,  a veteran bookie who is fielding near Millsy at Gloucester Park, says.

"It's great to see him going to these places like Wagin and Albany because it's the same apprenticeship I went through when I was starting out 35 years ago.

"There are few reasons why there are less bookmakers now. One is the rise of the corporate bookmakers but there are also now three totes across the country and less and less people going to race courses.

"By Millsy being at these country tracks, it gives people another reason to actually go there. He's got a public profile and hopefully with that he can help promote the art of bookmaking.

"I've known Millsy for years and he's a good bloke. Good luck to him, I've told him that I'm always around to help."

By the end of the third race at Gloucester Park, Millsy looks as if he might need that help.

A sizeable city wager, it transpires, is $1000 - the amount one astute punter places on all-the-way winners Jasper Freeway ($2.40) and Classic American ($1.40) in races two and three.

The punter doesn't come back for race four - or the rest of the night, as it turns out - and through races five, six and seven, it's Millsy who is winning out (on the track he' first past the post in a celebrity trot pony race, salutes the crowd extravagantly and then is disqualified for his steed galloping)

But then the Cup arrives. Millsy has already promised he'll "pin the ears back" and keep the badly-drawn early favourite David Hercules at an attractive price, a strategy endorsed by Martin ("We're all in the same boat there. And if David Hercules wins, we'll probably all be in that boat out on the river, trying to kicks holes in it.").

Then, however, something happens that isn't in the plans. Millsy gets caught off-guard and takes a bet on outsider Finbar Abbey that would result in a "payout bigger than I could have imagined."

Needless to say, an action-packed Cup makes for nervous watching.

David Hercules puts in an appropriately Herculean performance to finish second after being caught facing the breeze when the lead looked up for grabs. Finbar Alley looms frighteningly with 400 metres to go but can only run on into sixth. My Hard Copy comes from last to win - not necessarily Millsy's best result but much better than it could have been.

"I was having palpitations the whole race," Millsy confesses.

"Every time [race caller] Richard Bell said Finbar Alley my heart just about skipped a beat. I had visions in my head of him [Finbar Alley] sweeping down the outside and running over the top of them.

"As long as I live, I'm never going to forget the name of that horse."

Race nine passes with rather less drama and by the time the 10th and last race rolls around Millsy reckons he'll get out of the night just about even if he can get the short-priced favourite Beaudiene Boaz (one of the good things of the night, by his form assessment) over the line.

"What's happening? Is it going to win?" an unsighted Millsy asks me as the three-year-olds round Glooucester Park's top turn for the final time.

I consider extending the suspense for him and I'm wary of going the early crow. But given Beaudiene Boaz is the best part of 25 metres in front and coasting, I figure I'm safe to put his mind at ease.

"You're home," I tell him.

And with that it's just about time to actually go home. A clearly-drained Millsy shuts down his computer, switches off his odds screen and steps down from the stand.

He has $13 oweing to the one punter who backed Beaudiene Boaz with him. Someone else has forgotten to collect $240 from My Hard Copy's Cup win and will need to paid out at later date. All told though, Millsy has lost only the equivalent of a cab fare home, and still has his shirt on, even if it is a little more sweat-soaked than when he started.

He's been a more circumspect version of Millsy tonight than I'm used to - quiet, frankly, by the standards of a radio personality and sometimes auctioneer -  but given the circumstances that's understandable.

"To be honest, I probably would have paid $1000 just to have this experience tonight," Millsay says.

"There's just so much going on and so many things you have to think about. You're trying to be sociable with people and still do the things you have to do and I've made a couple of mistakes that I might have regretted and willl definitely learn from.

"In my regular job you often have people telling you that you are shit. Well tonight it's me probably telling myself that I'm shit.

"But it's been a great night. I'm not here trying to make a fortune but I don't want to be losing everything either.

"Really, I hope people might see or read about what I'm doing and decide it could be fun to go out to the trots. You don't even have to have a bet, just grab a picnic blanket and come and sit out on the grass on a nice summer night and watch these magnificent creatures in action.

"And for me, the most beautiful thing is that I get to pack up the car and do it all again in Albany tomorrow night!"

Radio 6PR is owned by Fairfax Media, the publisher of this website. It's also probably worth confessing that it was Millsy - a little more than a decade ago - who introduced this author to racehorse ownership and schooled him in the use of important racing terminology, such as describing a horse as "a cat".