Licensed betting office

Last Tenner Bets

Plot R7

Single-zero roulette on a UK table — all English on the baize, no French — and every one of the hundred and fifty-seven bets is placed by putting your chips on the board rather than picking a line off a menu. Toby calls the wheel in a Yorkshire accent and saves most of his language for big wins and balls that leave the table.

The scratchcards are MIGHTY OAKS, two pounds, and you take the wax off with the edge of a fifty pence piece. A thousand on the oak tree if it comes in. Along the wall, ACORN FALLS is a double-decker penny pusher that has never once been generous, and the shop has never pretended otherwise.

It is the sort of place that is warm, brightly lit and open when very little else is.

• MIGHTY OAKS £2 a card
• Top prize £1,000
• 157 placeable bets