I am, apparently, a problem gambler. I know I am, because of Gareth Bale. Mr Bale is a left back who plays for Tottenham Hotspur. On Saturday he was the first player to score in the Spurs-Arsenal match – a screaming free kick.

As I walked to the stadium, I decided I’d have a bet. I hadn’t intended to. Mr Bale was 33/1 to be the first player to score, and on the spur of the moment I stuck a tenner on him. Thanks to his left foot, I am £330 better off. Thanks, Gareth!

But according to a report which is being published on Wednesday – the British Gambling Prevalence Study – I shouldn’t be celebrating. I should be on the phone to a counsellor, because this marks me down as a problem gambler; an addict, even, because I’d also had a bet last Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. I had one yesterday, too.

The study is due to report that, of the 40 million of us who gamble, 2 per cent are “problem gamblers”; some 800,000 of the population.

Gambling can wreck lives. It can lead people into debt, into crime and into the gutter. But so, too, can stamp collecting. So can missionary work. So, in fact, can anything, if pursued without sense and without the funds to support it. But I have yet to read about the social problems caused by stamp collectors who blow their budget on penny blacks.

This week’s report is a classic piece of scaremongering, based on defining its key term so widely as to render it meaningless. Problem gamblers are measured in such reports – there was one in 1999 that found that there were 300,000 of us – through the answers given to a series of questions. Have you ever chased your losses? Have you ever lied about the amount you have gambled? Have you ever gambled more than you intended? How often do you gamble?

Here’s my confession, and why I am one of the 800,000 so-called problem gamblers. My answer to all of those questions would, at some time, have been yes. When I was a schoolboy, I sometimes told my father that I had put on a 2p yankee – total cost 22p – when it had actually been a 5p yankee (55p). I have gone to the racecourse with a budget of £100 and blown £200. I have lost solidly for a week and, determined to get the money back, stuck far more on a nag than sense dictated and lost that, too. And – this presumably is the clincher – not only do I subscribe to Racing UK so that I can watch racing every day, I have also been known – horror of horrors – to have a bet every day.

These pseudo-scientific analyses do more harm than good because they are so laughably over the top that they detract from what is indeed a problem – those people for whom gambling really is destructive. The best place for the British Gambling Prevalence Study, however, is the same wastepaper bin as most of my betting slips.

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