According to the latest Public Health England report on gambling, 0.5% of the population (approximately 246,000 people) are problem gamblers, and 3.8% (2.2 million people) are ‘at-risk’ gamblers.
The figures may seem relatively small, certainly compared with, say, 20 years ago, but the problems associated with gambling are multitude and serious.
There is one self-confessed former gambling “addict” who can testify to that and this is one of the reasons writer James Drew decided to put pen to paper and tell his very own personal story.
And what a story it is.
Under the deliciously evocative title of Fruity, his story might come as a salutatory tale to anyone with any sort of “addiction”, mild or otherwise.
It is a rip-roaring account of a 25-year “career” of someone, Drew, who was addicted to the fruit machines. Yes, those bright-coloured things you used to see in every pub in the UK and, of course, amusement arcades that took centre-stage in most British seaside resorts.
But it comes with a bit of serious health warning too, outlining how his fondness, shall we say, for fruit machines led him to being banned from places, threatened by thugs and very nearly cost him a lifelong friendship.
It is, though, above all else a wonderfully entertaining and instructive blast, evoking in the process a period in British cultural history that now (sadly?) seems to have been consigned to the past.
One of the main motivations for him writing the book was, it seems, a type of “revenge”, but more on that later.
Fruity starts when Drew, then aged just 17, was living in his native York and, even then, “very much addicted to fruit machines”.
Actually, as someone who grew up in pubs (his parents were pub landlords) that should come as no great shock, not least as most pubs in the UK back then (this was the 1970s and 1980s) heavily featured fruit machines as a principle source of entertainment (along with, maybe, a pool table which, thankfully, was far less addictive).
But, honest as ever, Drew makes no attempt to conceal the scale of his addiction at this stage, admitting to “stealing” in order to support his habit.
At this point, it is worth pointing out that this writer has, in effect, never played the fruit machines in pubs or anywhere so the book is something of an education on the phrases and terms used by players, as are the multiple brands over the years. He recalls how in 1988 his life “changed forever” because he – and best buddy Rich – twigged how to play the machines “better than anyone else alive.”
A “very happy childhood” included, from the age of six or seven, being transfixed by fruit machines – “fruities” in the jargon – in his parents’ various pubs that, “as far as I could see seemed only to pay money out.”
It is worth pointing out, as Drew does, that the UK still has some of the world’s strictest laws on fruit machines – they are still obliged to pay out a minimum of 70 percent of every penny that is put into them. But, crucially, this applies across the lifetime of the machine, so it will pay out its 70 percent, but only as that percentage of its takings over its lifetime.
In any event, Drew says that from 1980 he was hooked even if, back then, the jackpot was no more than one pound and then paid out as “tokes” or tokens.
These “gaudy, colourful, flashing” boxes in the corner of the pub bar really were, for the two of them, a “golden goose”.
They were a “different breed from normal punters” but all this came at a cost with Drew readily admitting he was playing on the machines when “I was supposed to be studying hard for my A levels”.
Fast forward a few years, and the two pals, and also Drew’s uncle Phil, later took to the road to find that Britain’s seaside amusement arcades provided even richer pickings.
The machines were pumping out so many coins that he recalls them having to “vigorously scrub” my hands to get them clean.
What was the secret of their amazing success? Well, he goes into some detail, as you might expect, to explain the “skill chances” that lay at the heart of it all.
Without giving too much away he reveals he was “the first person in the UK to stumble across” one particular “little trick”.
This may have been “easy for a young man of my talents” but it also naturally drew the attention of amusement arcade owners, some of whom took a very dim view of the sums of money the two lads were making on their premises.
Unlike his best buddy, whom he later fell out with over their mutual gambling habits (both are since reconciled) Drew says that, despite winning “hundreds, thousands of pounds doing something that, at the time, VERY few others were doing” he never really ended up with much, financially, to show for it all.
“I have absolutely nothing left to show for my time at the top of the game, save some very happy memories and the book you are reading.”
So, as he asks himself in Fruity, what made him do it? The answer and his main motivation was old fashioned revenge.
“I wanted revenge on fruit machines, their owners and the arcades. I was seriously addicted to them but, thank God, I was rescued by what I discovered,” says Drew, who later went on to work in journalism.
Fruity, at 88 pages, is a terrific account of one man’s addiction, both the sheer fun and joy in doing what he did for 25 years but also a cautionary tale of the flip side of addiction.
“It is really like a drug, you see,” he concedes.
He was often told “there’s only one winner in this game, son” and, in some ways that is as true today as back then.
But would he do it all again? You bet he would.
Now in his mid-50s, he played his last machine in anger ten years ago now but his ‘career’ as one of ‘The Special Ones’ gave him “more fun and joy than I have ever experienced in my life, before or since”.
*Fruity is published by Austin Macauley and is launched on 12 September. It is available on Amazon.
