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Miss £3 million
Jeffrey Bernard
I can't get over the woman who somehow contrived to lose £3 million on the did green baize. The whole story is distinctly irritating. Actually, come to think of it, it makes me bloody angry. She never once popped her head inside a racetrack of even the dog variety and she lost the lot, by all accounts, playing roulette of all games.. Roulette is very silly. Of all casino games the odds are stacked more heavily against the punter than almost any other game. I've seen some good winners at roulette who've almost bordered on consistency and they've won by backing numbers in blocks — blocks on the wheel, not the table — but even they've ended up in tears in the longish run. No, this woman must be daft.
To own up though, what annoys me most of course about the whole shaming business are the facts that (a) I've never had £3 million, (b) She didn't seek my advice on 'how to lose it and; (c) Judging by her appearance on television, she didn't enjoy the process and, even worse, she didn't mind. When I saw her on the box she answered, `I don't know,' to almost every question she was asked like, Was it a compulsion?' How long did it take?' or 'Would you do it again?' She was, in fact, just like a daft schoolboy caught in the act of a pettifogging misdemeanour. 'Why did you do it, Smith junior?' I don't know, sir.'
When I think what that woman and I could have achieved with £3 million at Ascot three weeks ago, never mind at the White City last Saturday night, I feel sick. I don't even believe she's a compulsive punter. She showed no signs of withdrawal on television, she appears to have made no resolutions about getting hold of another £3 million, in fact, I think she gambled out of sheer boredom and I'd very much like to know just how the hell anyone gets to be bored with £3 million in their or their spouse's current account. Well, don't you think it's odd? It's greedy too. If I had a wife with £3 million I'd be quite happy gambling, or at least staking, a lousy £100 a day. No more, in fact, than I'd expect her to spend on the housekeeping. My house.
I suppose I'm lucky really in that I've only had three bad attacks of the illness. The first time, when I was doing a book with Frank Norman about Soho, I put my total advance on red. Black came up and you could hear the slap my lady gave me the length of Greek Street. The second time was when I put £100 on Muhammed Ali to beat Joe Frazier and smokey Joe won. The third and worst attack was when I did an entire month's money in one afternoon in a betting shop in Fleet Street. That last attack made me sit up and take a bit of notice of my idiocy. It put me in mind of a meeting of Gamblers Anonymous that I once attended for journalistic reasons. Like the alcoholic variety, they stand up and give evidence against themselves.
There was one man there that really gave me the shudders. On his own account he'd just been sprung from doing three months in the Scrubs for having beaten up his wife. He said that he hit her over the head so that he could nick a lousy five bob out of her handbag that he wanted to bet on a dog. He said he had to have the bet. Furthermore, everyone at this particular meeting owned to being convinced — in their gambling days — that they would always win next time. You know, you'd think that some people could see that they were losers, wouldn't you?
Of course, we know that the clinical complexity of gamblers is enormous and we know that gambling isn't just an isolated spot but a symptom of a deep, underlying neurosis. One of my own symptoms is a deep dread of being potless, but this wretched woman had £3 million to play with. Now in spite of being aware of psychic masochism I feel that some of the most certifiable people in the world are rich people who gamble. It's said that a certain Lord dropped £100,000 in a three day session at the Clermont Club a few years ago and I'd like to know why? I also remember the story of two men leaving Crockfords in the middle of the night and one of them turned to the other and said, 'Oh well, I suppose I'll have to sell another village.'
I suppose there are a thousand reasons for this particular sort of lunacy. One especially, I've noticed among male gamblers, is that their constantly chasing or changing girl friends in an attempt to prove that they're not passive. I'd just like to know what the hell Miss £3 million thought she was up to. One thing is an odds on certainty and that's that she didn't even have the style of any of the lunatics I've met. She gives the impression of having somnambulated from table to table without any real purpose and I mean of not even having wanted to lose. Jimmy the Greek said it even if he was talking about poker. 'If you ain't a tiger, baby, forget it!' And he wasn't talking of just money.
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