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Paul Merson: Football, Gambling And Me
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Blair & Brown: The New Labour Revolution
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For all the horror stories Paul Merson told about his life in Football, Gambling And Me (BBC1), the addiction crisis in Britain is even worse than he described.
Merse is a mess. He doesn't try to hide it because he knows that honesty is his only hope now.
It's nine months, he said, since he last laid a bet. But when he did, during the winter lockdown, he lost all the money that he and his partner Kate had saved to put a deposit on a house.
The couple and their two children are now living in cramped, rented accommodation. It's a grim situation for the former England and Arsenal star, who estimates he has lost £7 million to gambling.
Paul Merson is a mess. He doesn't try to hide it because he knows that honesty is his only hope now, writes CHRISTOPHER STEVENS
But as a bloke in his mid-50s who grew up before the dawn of the internet, never mind the smartphone revolution, he has been shaped by very different pressures and temptations to the ones that beset young people today — the next generation of gambling addicts.
Football and gambling are now indivisible, as Baroness (Ruth) Davidson, a tireless campaigner for changes in the laws that regulate the gambling industry, warned in the Daily Mail earlier this year.
In the Premier League, 19 of the 20 clubs have a betting partner (many more than Merson realised when he said 'nearly half' were sponsored by the industry).
During one typical televised match, viewers saw
