The Poolie Bunker

THE CHEEKY BAST@RD.

A man who became addicted to gambling is suing a bookmaker for continuing to take his bets and allowing him to lose more than £2 million on golf, football and horse racing.

Graham Calvert, 28, a greyhound trainer from Tyne and Wear, says that he had asked William Hill to bar him from their betting shops because of his compulsive habit.

Over 16 months, beginning in August 2005, he placed £7.5 million on the outcomes of sporting events, sometimes walking into the betting shop with bin liners filled with £100,000 in cash.

He had been earning £30,000 a month and began betting £1,000 to £5,000 a time; his stakes rose over time to single bets of £30,000.


A year into this betting spree, he says, he recognised that he was suffering from an addiction and sought to curtail his own behaviour. In May 2006 he asked William Hill to ban him.

However, later that summer he says he was able to open another account and resume placing large bets, including one £347,000 bet backing America to win the Ryder Cup. They lost.

He now owes £1.5 million and says his life is in ruins: his wife has left him, taking their two young children with her.

His solicitor, Tiejha Smyth, said: “He was allowed to continue gambling after Hill's agreed he should be self-excluded. They should be held legally responsible.”

He is suing the bookmaker for the £2 million he lost after he asked to be barred. “If I’d known I had the problem and didn’t do anything about it, I would see myself as being 100 per cent responsible,” he told the BBC.

“The fact is that I did try to go through the right procedures and I was let down.”

The case opens at the High Court next week. William Hill has said it will contest the allegations.

The

The Gambling Commission, which regulates the industry, said at the time that since September 1, 2007 licensed betting operators were required to promote “socially responsible gambling” under the Gambling Act 2005. This included an obligation for licensees to “put in place procedures for self-exclusion and take all reasonable steps to refuse service or to otherwise prevent an individual who has entered a self-exclusion agreement from participating in gambling".

The self-exclusion period is a minimum of six months but customers should be given the option of extending this to a total of at least five years.

Paul Devlin, director of services at the brain injuries association Headway, said the Gambling Commission’s rules on self-exclusion still assumed that gamblers had “sufficient decision-making capacity to exclude themselves”.

I WONDER IF I COULD SUE ASDA FOR SELLING ME FOOD THAT MADE ME FAT.

no doubt you probably could. Nothing would surprise me. Those hydrogenated vegetable fats have been recently identified as a no-no to put in foods................there's loads of ready meals with these in.................fill yer boots!!!

I heard that story on the news last night. What a fooking muppet!

I bet he loses.

Dibble is planning to become a billionaire this way.

£347,000 says he doesn't!!

Now I'm no legal expert, but surely one of the first questions that the defence should be asking is whether or not he would have claimed the winnings had the bet come in?

I used to go out with his cousin. I was on to a loser with her as well!