The Chase’s Paul Sinha lifts lid on devastating addiction battle, huge financial losses & brutal way he was outed as gay
THE Chase star Paul Sinha has spilled all on his tough addiction battle and how it almost left him in financial ruin.
Paul, 53, struggled with gambling addiction during his late teens and early twenties after leaving home to attend medical school.
The popular TV star admitted there was not one single 'positive thing' that came from his struggle that left him with huge financial losses.
Paul opened up on the difficult time whilst chatting to TV presenter and journalist Kate Thornton on her podcast.
Speaking on the tough times, The Chase star said: "The one thing that I would say I would put down as no good came from that, and you mentioned it previously, was the gambling addiction.
"I can't think of anything positive that came from the gambling addiction.
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"When people say, ‘what would you say to your 16-year-old self?’, what I would say is never, ever, ever walk into a betting shop in your life, because that's the one avenue of error where I don't think any positivity came out of it at all, just a lot of financial losses.
"So, it's not that every bad event has a sliding doors silver lining, it's just most of them do."
He credited his phone as saving him from resorting back to addiction after revealing that he is now no longer "bored".
Paul said: "I think about gambling a lot, because at its worst I was very bad indeed. Now, I can walk past a betting shop and not even have the slightest inclination to walk in, and I think fundamentally, I'm not bored anymore.
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"The reason I'm not bored is that we have something called a smartphone. We have a device that's in our hands and in our hands is a device that allows you to connect with the entire world."
Elsewhere in his chat with Kate, he confessed that he was brutally outed whilst a student at medical school when a drunken prank call to his mother's landline revealed his secret.
He said: "I came out to my mum because somebody at a house party at our house rang my mum from our house phone and said, ‘your son's gay’ and put the phone down.
"That is how she found out that I was gay; I can laugh about it now."
Then aged 24, it would be a further 11 years until he opened up to his father about his sexuality.
As Kate asked if the prank was "an act of malice", Paul confessed that it was a stressful time but he is able to look at the situation comically now and has built in into his many popular comedy sets.
White Wine Question Time is available to listen to on all podcast platforms.
Kate's chat with Paul can be streamed now.