They simply try to make up for working unsocial hours (British casinos close at 4am) by catching up with home life and children. “That’s why so many casino people date each other,” I was told, “we don’t meet anyone else.”Beyond the narrow space of their own baize, they are typically not much interested in what’s going on.In the old days of the floating crap game and the street-corner bookie, gambling was a shady affair There was an edge of danger to it. He could probably also give you a short disquisition on product differentiation and elasticities of demand, if you cared. Today, the first graduates of gambling studies in Britain complete their course. In a ceremony at the University of Salford, 33 casino staff – managers, inspectors and pit bosses – who took temporary leave of the roulette wheel and the blackjack table for a gamble in academia, will be awarded their certificates.
The occasion marks a new stage in the evolution of gambling in Britain. When you arrive, he or she is likely to greet you by your first name and will probably also know your income, tastes, family background and expected win or loss. When you go out for a night’s gambling, the modern casino manager does not peer suspiciously at you through a peephole in the door.

You never know what part of your anatomy may be pinned up there.. Make him look a fool in the work place, and you have got him where it hurts. I know.So all you Casanovas out there, as you pen a romantic ode to your secret lover, before you congratulate yourself on a jolly good plan, check the mail or the work noticeboard. Lynda could have called him a philandering bastard and thrown a glass of wine in Brown’s face, but he would probably have laughed and increased his kudos down the bar as a right old lady-killer.No, the man’s Achilles’ heel is his professional reputation.

Whilst young boys find out who is the leader of the gang by fighting it out in the playground, young girls create a hierarchy by using their verbal skills. As we grow up without recourse to fighting, a young woman hones her verbal and manipulative talents until she can outwit or out manoeuvre a man any day.Instead of shouting and rutting, a woman shows her claws and goes for the jugular, not with a broken beer glass down the pub on a Friday night, but with a strategically planned course of action. Maybe the reason is that women are very good at it.For a start, we have had years of practice. It seems that revenge, the cold and calculating kind, is a particularly female preserve. Could it be that the fairer sex hides a Machiavellian and cruel interior? I don’t think so. Margaret Cook, who took pen to paper when her husband, the Foreign Secretary, Robin Cook, went off with his assistant.The days of the cringing wife who stands meekly by as her husband goes philandering, and then comes back for scones and sympathy, are over. Perhaps outing your lover as a bigot and risking his job is going too far, but revenge is often the only recourse women have As Lord Byron says, revenge is sweet – especially to women.

Women are doing it for themselves – revenge that is.The notorious instances are becoming urban myths: the woman who cut up her husband’s Savile Row suits and got the entire village drunk on the contents of his wine cellar. Gone are the days when women sat back and got on with the knitting as their men charmed and smarmed their way into their secretaries’ beds. When Lynda found out, she called him a cheat and a liar and, somewhere between wanting to do an extreme Lorena Bobbitt and shaking her head in anger, she opted for a subtler revenge. Ouch!For nearly five years, Brown kept two lovers in tow, lavishing his affections on both 54-year-old church elder Phyllis Kirk, and 48-year-old primary teacher Lynda Slaven. She says she kept tapes of Brown singing sectarian songs into her answer machine, and when she found out he had been cheating on her, sent them to the News of the World. In a moment of uncontrollable rage – and let’s face it, when you’re hurt, your judgement is distorted – I sent copies of my lover’s naked little body to all his clients and his colleagues.He was duly ridiculed, and became the butt of many crude jokes for months to come I felt great.