In the old days (actually only a few years ago) gambling in the UK required the punter to make a bit of an effort. You either had to go into a rather intimidating and scruffy bookmaker or go to a casino - few and far between and a little intimidating to the average man on the street too.

There were other options; you could stick some money in the fruit machine in a pub, though the payouts were restricted to a few pounds;make a bet by phone if you were in the know; have a private poker party; visit a race track. But essentially, it wasn’t easy to make a casual bet and that’s the way the law was designed.

Nowadays, we have online gambling and it’s really all changed. Virgin Money, in conjunction with tabloid newspaper, The Daily Mirror ran a survey recently which found that 93% of adults with internet access had placed at least one bet. It’s difficult to imagine something else that 93% of people would have done - maybe as something as ubiquitous as clicking on a link would come close. This is something your Mum has probably done if she lives in the UK, which is one of my definitions of mainstream.

Half the 2,000 people in the survey said that they’d started online gambling in the last 6 months, which says to me that word of mouth is clicking in. We have a true viral epidemic.

What this seems to show is that the easier you make it for people to gamble, the more they will. It’s not just a question of accessibility, online betting also offers anonymity. Your Mum doesn’t have to explain to the neighbours or your Dad why she’s suddenly spending a lot of time in the local bookies.

There’s a strong argument that with even easier and even more anonymous gambling coming to your mobile, this will show explosive growth too. Without trying to be too prurient, this doesn’t seem like a good thing to me. Some people are known to get addicted to gambling and others certainly get into trouble financially - you could argue that the two are the same actually.

Maybe this should be one area where operators should be encouraged to retain some parts of the wall in their garden.

Photo from Flickr.