Britain at the Bookies, TV review: gambling is a mug's game

The three-part documentary reveals hoe pensioners are quietly frittering away their winter fuel allowances on the races

Programme Name: Britain at the Bookies (BBC)

Tony, of the bookmaker Coral, has run a successful branch in Huddersfield for 20 years, though he has never been a betting man himself. That is probably because, as part one of the three-part documentary Britain At The Bookies quickly made apparent, gambling is a mug's game.

Britain’s betting shops are a long way from the glamour of a Monte Carlo casino. Here, it was mostly pensioners quietly frittering away their winter fuel allowances on the races, while Tony busied himself wiping sweaty fingerprints off the fixed-odds betting machines. These relatively recent introductions to the bookies are the crack cocaine of gambling, raking in around £870 per week per machine, and hopelessly hooking compulsive types, such as the unemployed Stuart.

There are also some gamblers who seem to know what they are doing, like the anorak-y office worker Sean. He placed his bets online and spent his winnings on such sensible investments as a new bathroom. Yet, even in Sean’s case, the house always wins eventually, thanks to sophisticated technology which allows Coral HQ to track the IP addresses of high rollers and close accounts when they start winning big. Like I said, a mug's game.