Everyone plays with complete sang-froid although they might be about to win or lose several thousand pounds.”This is going to be popular,” sniffs an elderly man called Harry, as the cards are dealt out “Just like poker But I’ve never played poker. I think I’ll be worse than you,” he says, elbowing me in the ribs matily. Harry comes to the club four times a week and spends “a few hundred” each time “I’ve been a member for 27 years,” he says, proudly. What’s the attraction? “Luck, I think.”"Greed and stupidity,” interjects the man in the flowered tie Harry nods in agreement. We look at our cards, setting them into runs, pairs or flushes to beat the house. “At the end of the year, you always lose,” says Harry, a retired business man who formerly ran a women’s clothing company “Why do I play? It’s like a drug I’m addicted.

But I’m looking forward to the new games.”The games have a house “edge”, in which the casino holds back a small percentage of any possible payout – which is the same as roulette. “But the odds are much better than the Lottery,” says Roger Gilles, manager of the club Mr Gilles is sure they’ll take off in a big way. Indeed, on a weekday night, the number of players wishing to learn the rules is astounding. According to Mr Gilles, the club wins an average of £60 per head every night. As he sees it, it’s no different to spending the same amount ofmoney on a night out at a restaurant, or the opera.”It’s just the same as the opera,” says the man in the flowered tie “It’s an escape It breaks up the humdrum of everyday life.

Oh, I’ve had theories about how to win, and I’ve even tried them out at home on a computer But although you may think you can win, you never do. They know all the tricks here, and the odds are against winning You’ll never win in the long term.”. OK, I confess, as a new parent I, too, have bored my immediate circle with tales of Junior’s unique and extraordinary behaviour: the way that said child’s ears so resemble Great Uncle Alfred’s, his amazing control of the yoghurt spoon, and so on. However, not even in my most hormone-crazed moments did I find it necessary to declare my new-found parenthood to following traffic – no “Baby on Board” sticker on my back window.
Perhaps the single most irritating car accessory since Garfield, Baby on Board stickers are now one of Mothercare’s best-selling products. They appear to cross boundaries: I’ve seen Saab Turbos with them as well as second-hand Datsun Cherrys They have also crossed the Channel: Bebe en Bord. Last week I spotted a rather sad example – a homemade paper strip lying flat on the back shelf of a parked Skoda. I noticed it only because I was walking past at the time.So, apart from declaring smugly to an uncaring world that the car’s owner has had carnal relations at least once, what exactly are these things for? You can already tell whether there’s a child in the car: the driver meanders down the slow lane while turning round every other minute to gesticulate at an apparent void.One new parent rather weakly explained that perhaps other drivers would treat her more considerately.

Well, I’m afraid it has exactly the reverse effect on me, even as I lean over to stuff a banana in my darling child’s screaming gob If it were not for my no-claims bonus … These ghastly things originated in America, where, I grudgingly concede, there is some point to them. There have been reported instances of emergency crews arriving at accidents and not realising that there were babies hidden beneaththe wreckage of those huge American cars. How they’d spot a 4in by 4in sticker rather than a squalling baby beats me.As of next year, Mothercare will carry warnings on its packaging: if you’re involved in an accident, remove the sticker if there is no child in the car. Seems logical enough.I tried out the babies-in-wreckage theory on the London Ambulance Service.