For Richer, For Poorer by Victoria Coren

Author:Victoria Coren [Coren, Victoria]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: _Non-Fiction, General Fiction
Publisher: Canongate Books
Published: 2009-09-16T23:00:00+00:00

Lined up for an ordinary high-stakes British poker tournament, I would expect to see: professional poker players (25), used car dealers (7), people who ‘buy and sell things’ (30), taxi drivers (8), men ‘in the security business’ (9), visiting Germans, Irishmen, French or Dutchmen who do much the same things in their own countries (15), twentysomething lads with borderline cool haircuts, just discovering poker (16 and rising), women (3, including me).

So it is weird to see so many celebrities playing, but the juxtapositions of genre and status aren’t surprising at all. That is how celebrity works. Fame is one big bubble where they all meet. That is how Freddie Trueman’s daughter came to marry Raquel Welch’s son. That is how the American boxer Mike Tyson came to date the Streatham-born model Naomi Campbell, argued with her at a cocktail party and was sternly told to ‘Leave that girl alone!’ by the elderly Oxford philosopher A.J. Ayer.

‘Do you know who the fuck I am?’ snarled Tyson. ‘I’m the heavyweight champion of the world!’

‘And I am the former Wykeham Professor of Logic,’ replied Ayer. ‘We are both pre-eminent in our field; I suggest that we talk about this like rational men.’

Now that’s what I call a cocktail party.

And if there is one thing that flattens categories even more than fame, it is gambling. Plenty of incongruous people have found common ground on the baize, famous or otherwise. Tom Parker Bowles and Roger de Courcey have less distance between them than many who have won and lost money together throughout history. Dukes and dustmen have always met at racecourses; the Vic is full of class- and category-bucking friendships. Gambling is an addiction, and addictions level all.

I’m not saying these particular punters are addicts. But £25,000 is on offer, with free entry, and any gambler can smell that kind of deal from several counties away.

♠

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