New Statesman: Cross the threshold of the casino and you'll find miserable old desperadoes

Americans who come over here take trips to the A City of London. Yes, some of them may actually once have read a history book, and find the monument to the starting point of the Great Fire of London almost as exciting as the Macy's Christmas grotto. But most of them head for the Old Lady of Threadneedle Street, St Paul's Cathedral and the royal parks -- because they remember Mary Poppins. Where's the old lady saying "Feed the birds, guv'nor? Tuppence a bag?" they wonder. You can see it in their disappointed Ohio faces.

If you've never been to a ball or a casino, your ideas of what they are like will also be based on fantasy, dreams and old movies. Mine were. The first ball I went to was a Valentine's Day charity bash at a swanky London hotel. For weeks beforehand, I sat staring through the window on the Underground, remembering clips from romantic films. There was Cathy from Wuthering Heights at the Lintons' mansion wearing a bouncy, floaty gown. There was Bette Davis, flouncing with attitude down the stairs in a "come-get-me-if-you-dare" bodice-style frock. By Holborn station, Scarlett O'Hara would be whirling beneath the chandeliers, breaking hearts.

Two weeks before the big night, I finally plucked up the courage to make an appointment at a fashion house to hire a full-length, floor-sweeping ball gown.

"It's going to be white ... or red ... and perfect to waltz in," I gasped to my boyfriend of the time.

He started to yuck yuck: "Loz, it's a party where blokes like me get pissed, stumble about and grope posh babes with boobs. All that's different from your average nightclub is that you get to put your head down a higher class of bog when you throw up your champagne."

When I worked in Vienna, my boss took me to a casino. He seemed amazed by my excitement. "But Lauren, if I play, it is for serious. I vill be taking a few souzand schillings viz me." I started to lump up and down. "Und yes, you can, if you must, gamble a few hundred on ze card tables." He went in slacks -- I dressed up. The glamorous, neon-lit entrance hid the miserable truth about casinos from the outside world.

Inside, day and night, dozens of Chinese waiters sat around the green baize losing their family's rent money. We pulled up stools at a blackjack table. There was a smell of dim sum and beer. A chain-smoking man in his fifties sitting next to me gasped and clutched his heart as his paltry pile of chips went down, hand after hand after hand. We sat side by side for more than seven hours. My boss stopped giving me chips once he realised that there was no method in the madness of my betting. Still, the smoking man played on desperately until his last chip went to the house.

I forgot all of this last week, when I pulled on my floaty evening clothes and headed off to the casino on La Grande Plage, Biarritz. From the warm, midnight beach came wafts of cannabis smoke and the sound of drums. I ignored the temptation to kick off my heels and throw myself on to the sand with the kids there. A grown-up night out was on the cards.

Once through the pillared, red-carpeted entrance, the horrible truth revealed itself: the ground floor of the Biarritz casino has about as much je ne sais quoi as a seafront arcade in Blackpool. There are rows and rows and rows of buzzing, humming slot machines. The volume of noise is incredible, after the peace of the seafront. Ladies of a certain age in fluffy leisurewear spread across stools and miserably feed vast buckets of coins into slots.

We went in with 100 euros and came out with 115. What made us really feel like millionaires, though, was a romantic, shoeless walk through the surf. Bongos and marijuana: you can't beat it for atmosphere.