Oscar Wilde said the only chances in life you regret are the ones you didn’t take. I don’t know if I’d go that far, but like the best of the Irish I enjoy the odd flutter.

It was your average quiet MSSVD evening at the Royal Society of Medicine in London. The young Irish doctor, Dr Concepta Merry, had just presented a paper outlining the complexities of anti-HIV therapy compliance among the Dublin drug addicts. Now, I had done some locums in Dublin in the …