A COUPLE of weeks ago, a group of us from the British Lion in Devizes paid our traditional visit to the Ascot Beer Festival. We all went in a minibus and I’d like to say that it harked back to the charabanc trips of the last century with a crate of brown ale in the back and a good old sing song. But licensing laws forbid drinking on minibuses. Some might see this as health and safety gone mad in a nanny state and a gross infringement of our fundamental rights and liberties; others would say it’s just sensible.

When it comes to the singing, our driver, Ian, can only take so much and most of us opted for a snooze on the way back and dreams of the next comfort break.

The beer festival is held at the racecourse as part of the October meeting. As far as I know, we all had a bet on each race. A couple of the group came away with a few hundred quid in their pockets. Some broke even. Some, like me, were down.

For the first time, I reckon the bus as a whole was in profit, thanks in no small part to Mr Lanfranco (I never knew that was his name before this trip) Dettori. None of us lost our houses that day and none was able to retire. In short, we gambled (insofar as it is possible) responsibly. We might have exceeded the government’s recommended daily limits for alcohol consumption but our gambling was within the bounds of reason.

A flutter now and again is a bit of fun; most of us have a couple of quid on the National, maybe we do the lottery, we buy the odd raffle or somesuch. Big deal. But that’s not the case for everyone. Lots of high street bookmakers carry the warning ‘when the fun stops, stop’. But it’s not that simple for some. For them – those who are truly hooked – it’s not just about fun, it’s about excitement, hope and the adrenalin rush.

As one old boy (a man who’d lost more than I’d ever care to count to the bookies) told me “you should only ever gamble with what you can afford to lose … but where’s the fun in that?”

As you’ll have gathered, I’m not against gambling per se. What I object to is the relentless, pervasive and insidious advertising the ‘pastime’. Telly adverts for gambling have increased by at least 600 per cent since the 2007 Gambling Act.

If you watch Sky Sports you’ll be familiar with the looming presence of Ray Winstone, sometimes just his disembodied head hovering over a stadium, telling us how he gambles responsibly.

The end of every second over in a Test seems to lead into an advert wherein a genial Liverpudlian gives us the best offers, an odd pair called Stan and James expound on their approaches to betting, a maniac with a beard screams “Victor! Victor!” or a group of likeable lads have a high old time betting on anything and everything.

The language is getting more ‘friendly’ too. An accumulator is now an ‘acca’ and they generously offer you a free bet if one selection ‘lets you down’, with the implication that this is against the norm.

The NHS estimates that there may be as many as 593,000 problem gamblers in the UK. The bookies tell us that they don’t want gambling to destroy lives. They’re not charities and profit is what counts but they want to make sure that the goose keeps laying golden eggs. The sports’ betting market is mainly aimed at men (or ‘lads’) but the bookies aren’t sexist when it comes to taking money as you can see from adverts that are targeted at women – mainly bingo – with one that even tells us 'friends who play together stay together' . That’s a cynical twisting of the old ‘pray together’ saying.

Gambling can be fun and it’s an ingrained part of our culture but we’re far more exposed to it than we ever were. I know I’m not alone in finding this a worry.