I certainly want the banks to look a bit closer at how people spend their money because they can clearly see that if somebody’s on a low income is depositing a bit of a high percentage of their, you know, maybe over their disposable income, they just need to have a word and intervene. It’s difficult, but I think it’s necessary because they’ve got the overall view. If you know, if I have an account with William Hill, they don’t know how much I spend with Ladbrokes, Coral, Paddy Power, Sky Bet, whoever but the banks do. The banks can see this, so I think the banks could play a big part in that.

There are far too many adverts on. Whether they’re on before nine o’clock, after nine o’clock, whatever channels they’re on, there’s too many of them. I think if they would have just been sensible and said, right, we’ll have the same amount of advertising as, you know, as food and drink and all the rest of it, but it’s bombarded… My concern is that youngsters as young as eight, nine and 10 following their team will see betting companies on the shirts. Although the logo shirts aren’t the same for the kids that they wear, they’re still seeing it. You see on the television; all you see around the parameter is betting adverts. So that needs to be nipped in the bud.

And I’d also consider, although it’s going to take a long time, I would raise the age to 21 not 18. I think 21 is more in line with a person’s development. I think we’ve already seen it with the lottery, where it’s gone from 16 to 18 because of the scratch cards situation, so although it would take time, I’d like to see 18 to 21 and that’s what I’d look at.

I certainly want the banks to look a bit closer at how people spend their money because they can clearly see that if somebody’s on a low income is depositing a bit of a high percentage of their, you know, maybe over their disposable income, they just need to have a word and intervene. It’s difficult, but I think it’s necessary because they’ve got the overall view. If you know, if I have an account with William Hill, they don’t know how much I spend with Ladbrokes, Coral, Paddy Power, Sky Bet, whoever but the banks do. The banks can see this, so I think the banks could play a big part in that.

There was an awful slogan that the operators put out called When the Fun Stops Stop. It’s still visible now. I mean, I didn’t ask to become an addict. And of course, I take some responsibility for it. But I do blame certain operators and I do, to a degree blame some of the banks for not intervening as well. But nevertheless, the player does have to take responsibility for their actions. But some of the products now are so highly addictive and combustible that people from the age of 18 to 80 are getting into problems, men as well as women.

You’ve only got to look at how outdated those numbers are to know that we’ve got a real serious problem with gambling in this country. I mean, I think at last count, there was close to 7,000 betting shops. There’s only twelve hundred McDonald’s. There’s only fourteen hundred Starbucks, for example, that kind of thing. We’ve got 7,000 betting shops and you’ve got your penny arcades and you know, your little, little sort of shops that offer you all these outlets and the youngsters are just exposed to it at a young age.

The moment you start, the more things you bet on in your portfolio, the more likely you are to be a chaser. And the more likely you are when you have a bad day, you’ll go to something that’s quick. So, what you’ll have is someone will be watching a football match, they’ll be watching another football match over there. They’ll be playing poker, playing the slots, got their phone and they’re doing five or six things at once. That’s just terrifying. Absolutely terrifying. What is it going to the brain? Was it doing to your thinking? Can you sleep? Can you concentrate? No, you can’t. You know, what is it? Remember they used to spin plates at the circus, you know, and it’s like that’s what it’s doing to your mind.

I think the first thing we have to do, we have to separate sports betting and casino games betting… So, if you open up a William Hill account now, you open it up and you may intend to only bet on horse racing or sport, but you will be offered bingo coupons, poker coupons, slot tournaments, all the rest of it, which is fine. But that kind of cross-selling to me, it lures people in too early. If I want to gamble on a casino I know where to go. If I want to gamble on sports betting, I’d have to go to a bookmaker, although I could use the exchanges.

These progressive jackpots aren’t very good that have got to be won by midnight every night because if they haven’t been won by 10 o’clock in the night, people are piling the money in late. They’re a really bad one they are. Paddy Power do them quite a lot. Oh, this jackpot must be won tonight, and they come on at half past 10; it still hasn’t been won, guys. So, people are thinking well, I think I’ll have a tenner on that. And then Channel 5 have the roulette on late at night on the television. I don’t know whether you’ve seen that at all. Half past 12, 21.co.uk, three hours of roulette live on television

They make it appealing, ‘have a bet with your mates’. You know, and all the rest of it, and Sweet Caroline and all this malarkey. What they’ve done, in my opinion, all of these operators, they’ve turned it in from an entertainment pleasure leisure, soft industry that could still have made them all a lot of money into a very harsh, brutal and damaging environment and landscape. But people now are not savvy enough to know when to stop. You know, they could be having a few drinks at home and the next thing, waaay, they’re pressing anything ‘Oh, how much have I lost? Oh, I don’t know’. And they wake up in the morning and they found that they deposited £1000 and lost it, and they don’t know what they did. It shouldn’t be happening… And that’s got to change, you know, and that mentality of the operators has to be forced to change.

The key to recovery groups is that you’ve got to start when people are in the formative years because that’s when it starts. And, you know, that’s why it needs to – and now that it’s become part of the curriculum it’s great. But I’ve got relatives who are teachers, and they have no idea how to get that message across as part of the curriculum. So that needs to be focused on to stop the youngsters who illegally gambling under the age of 18 becoming, you know, being, as I see it, groomed to become the next problem gamblers.

I had one person say to a friend of mine well, all you’ve got to do is stop. Oh my god. All you’ve got to stop. What sort of an answer is that? When the Fun Stops, Stop. It’s too much because they make it sound so easy. Well, when your fun stops, stop. OK, I’ll stop. So, stop sending me emails. Stop VIPing me, you know? It’s a two-way thing, isn’t it?

If I lose a thousand 2,000, 3,000, 4,000, 5,000, 6,000 with a certain bookmaker, they make it seven eight nine, 10, 11 and all the way up to 41,000. They never stopped me. It only stopped because I ran out of money.

In hindsight, now, she said to me at the end, she said, “I wish you were having an affair”. Because I’d been not wilfully neglecting her, but accidently, I’m going to say accidentally neglecting the relationship, but you know oh, we’re going out on Friday with, you know, with Jane and Charlie, “Oh, no, I can’t. I’ve got to do a report for work”. I didn’t have to do a report to work. I was gambling, you know, and a whole host of what I was calling porky pies at the time because I was more interested in the gambling than going out with her. It wasn’t anything that was wrong with the relationship. It just meant that gambling meant more to me at that time than what the relationship did.

I lost my daughter unexpectedly and that just transformed my life, and I lost my motivation and my interests, and it just fizzled out very, very quickly. And then sadly, the FOBT addiction took over… After what happened, I just lost a lot of interest in life, quite frankly. You know, I mean, it affected me in many ways, so it just fizzled out. The addiction drifted into my life, and before I knew it, I’d lost all my savings and home and found myself in a very bad place.

I was falling behind with a lot of payments for things. And I realized I was in trouble now. I was probably down to my last £50,000 and I started to panic. I felt like a rising panic of needing to win… I didn’t know whether to start playing poker again or stop and just keep the £50,000. And I panicked and £41,000 in one day unexpectedly. And that ultimately left me with 13 pence in my account, which ultimately left me in a very bad financial and physical and mental place. I had a bit of a breakdown, suicide attempt. And that’s as close to rock bottom as you can get as far as I’m concerned.

I mean, it involved 123 days of not leaving the flat. It involved 123 days of what we now know is self-isolation where I lived in my own bubble, where I got rid of my phone, self-excluded from all the accounts so that if even I was tempted to have a £10 bet or whatever, I went round the betting shops and filled in all the forms to say, you know, don’t let me in and all the rest of it. I had my food delivered, had my medication delivered and I didn’t leave the flat for 123 days.

I knew with the FOBTs I couldn’t win it back so there was a bit of common sense built in with a sort of relief that it was over, to be honest, because it was purgatory feeling, you know, the brutal days of losing five and ten thousand I thought were bad enough, but forty-one thousand in one day was a bit of, a bit of a heavy hit.