Patrick Foster

And I thought, well, I'm going to go to prison because I know no one else does.

But along the way, I've committed fraud to a degree, theft, forgery.

And I thought I was going to go to prison.

And I walked out of that meeting and I panicked.

I wasn't thinking rationally.

And the irony of a gambling addiction, which is the only thing, I guess, that makes it different from the other addictions, is weirdly the only thing you ever think is going to solve it is actually the thing that's caused it in the first place.

Alcoholics don't try and drink themselves sober.

But as a gambling addict, you manage to convince yourself it's just about money.

And you think all I need to do is get money back, pay off all the debts, and the problem goes away.

had no money, rang somebody up, somebody I'm close to, told them a lie I'm not proud of.

I said, look, I desperately need a huge sum of money, but I promise you I'll pay you back at the end of this week.

Because it was the start, by coincidence, of the Cheltenham Horse Racing Festival,

which used to be my biggest week of the year.

And I honestly believed I could turn that money into half a million pounds, which is what I thought the extent of my debt was at the time.

The only difference was now I only had four days to do it and everybody found out the secret.

During that week, I gambled all day, all night.

I won and I lost.

I can never, ever explain how stressful it was.

And then on the Thursday, I started to lose everything that I had really, really quickly.

and thought, shit, like, what do I do now?