In my on going campaign to destroy innocence and beauty wherever it may flourish I took promising comic, Francesca Martinez to Melbourne casino. It wasn¡¯t her first time gambling. I had already taken her to the casino in Edinburgh last year. Now she was hooked, I just had to reel her in, get her addicted to this insane pastime so she will lose all her money and possessions. By eliminating the comedy competition I can guarantee myself a career in the laugh biz for life.
In Edinburgh, Francesca had been pretty lucky, but we lost $100 in about three minutes at roulette and blackjack. You have to remember that these are Australian dollars and thus largely worthless, but it was still a disappointing start. And I suddenly saw the flaw in my plan of comedy domination as we were only gambling with my money.
We played some more blackjack and lost another $100. The magic was gone, but then had some luck on roulette and scraped back most of our losses. As we were walking out Francesca said she had a good feeling about one of the blackjack tables. So we had another go and indeed had an impressive run and so I ended the night $150 up (enough to buy a can of coke in the UK or a small house on the outskirts of Melbourne).
So my good luck continues and we left the gaudy confines of Melbourne casino where the desperation and pain of the other gamblers hung palpably in the air. I felt like calling out to them ¡°Don¡¯t you understand. You can¡¯t win! You can¡¯t! Just by being here you are confirming your status as a loser.¡±
But the casino fell silent and the lights stopped flashing and they all looked at me as one as and chanted, ¡°How can you say that? With your crisp new $150 in your pocket. If you can do it, so can we,¡± and the casino burst into life again. The pokies (slot machines) sang out their tinny tunes, the cards flapped onto green baize, the roulette balls jumped and danced its furious dance around their wheels looking for somewhere to rest for just a second and the croupiers pushed the hundreds of dollars of losing chips down the hole in the table, where they fall directly into the bank vault of the laughing man who owns the Crown Casino.
