Brian Viner: The set of odds that all gamblers ignore

As the son of a heavy gambler and sometime bookmaker, whose betting shop in Liverpool in the 1960s was successful only as a counterblast to the old adage that there is no such thing as a poor bookie, I learnt with sadness that an acquaintance of mine, the prolific betting correspondent Angus "Statto" Loughran, has been declared insolvent with large debts owed to unnamed creditors.

On top of Loughran's tribulations come reports that Graham Calvert, one of Britain's most successful greyhound trainers, is suing William Hill for more than £2m, money he lost gambling after asking the bookmaker not to let him bet again.

Leaving aside the merits or otherwise of this case, which is due to be settled in the High Court, the message of both these sorry stories seems unequivocal: that betting, to quote another old adage, is a mug's game. Yet Loughran has always seemed to me anything but a mug.

In 1995 he had the foresight to back Tiger Woods, then an amateur golfer, to win the 2000 Open Championship at St Andrews. He wagered £1,000 at odds of 100/1 and duly bought a flat in St Andrews out of his winnings. I last saw him a year or so ago at Ludlow races. He extolled the chances of a 4/1 shot in the next race and it won. I thought I was the mug for only backing his tip with a fiver, rather than a month's wages. But the truth is that, in betting, and however costly it might seem at the time, there is wisdom in restraint.

As for those unable to exercise restraint, the paradox is that they take no notice of the one formbook they should know by heart, the one that says that only a negligible number of compulsive gamblers come out on top. Like all addictions, gambling is basically an exercise in delusion. The late, great comedian Richard Pryor summed it up, when he said, "I'm not addicted to cocaine, I just like the smell."

Unfortunately, there is no addiction that our acquisitive culture encourages more than gambling. Today, in every high street in the country, signs in betting shop windows will tell passers-by how they can turn £10 into £150 with an astute bet on tomorrow's Manchester United v Arsenal FA Cup tie. Those minded to succumb to this tempting offer of alchemy would do well to remember what another wise old wag, the journalist Jeffrey Bernard, once said, that "in most betting shops you will see three windows marked "Bet Here" but only one marked "Pay Out". The American Joe E Lewis put it another way. "I met with an accident on the way to the track," he said. "I arrived safely."

Of course, no amount of warning aphorisms will make any difference to the person who spots a dead cert, and there's no point getting pious about betting shops advertising their wares, not when practically every newsagent has rolls of scratchcards available at the counter.

Besides, even taking out a mortgage represents a gamble these days. Fixed rate or variable? Jack the Lad or Romany Prince? Betting in one way or another is an intrinsic part of our daily lives, whether or not we have a telephone account with Messrs Ladbroke or Hill. Moreover, the odd flutter can be fun, if only because it encourages a bit of harmless fantasising.

A week ago, I spent 20 minutes telling my children why winning the £95m Euromillions jackpot would be disastrous for me and them. And then I bought a ticket.

Albert and Marilyn: no chemistry

Marilyn and Ella, Bonnie Greer's play about the friendship between Marilyn Monroe and Ella Fitzgerald, opens tonight in London.

It's amazing how much mileage there still is in Monroe, and on the subject of her more unlikely friendships, I am minded to repeat the comedian Arnold Brown's old story about an encounter in LA between Monroe and Albert Einstein.

Famously in thrall to clever men, she engineered a dinner with Einstein, at the end of which she fluttered her eyelashes, and invited him to explain his Theory of Relativity. "I'm sorry, my dear," the great physicist replied, "but I never go zat far on a first date."

* The story of the French rogue trader Jerôme Kerviel, who cost Société Générale £3.7bn, is fascinating for all sorts of reasons. But I was possibly alone in marvelling at one detail above all others; that his mother, a retired hairdresser called Marie Jose, had once owned a salon called Le Monde Imagin'Hair. I was thrilled to learn that dreadful punning names for hairdressing salons is not a uniquely British phenomenon, and I wonder whether French florists are similarly prone, as ours are.

Why it should be principally florists and hairdressers who do this, I'm not sure. But pass through any town, the length and breadth of the British Isles, and sooner or later you will come across an "Every Bloomin' Thing"or an "Austin Flowers", a "Curl Up and Dye" or a "Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow". My favourite hereabouts, in Herefordshire, is "The Best Little Hair House in Hereford". That, I think, is a cut above the rest.

b.viner@independent.co.uk

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