Arsenal fan favourite Paul Merson came up just short in the final of The Great Celebrity Pottery Throw Down - but he won't see any of his television fee directly

Paul Merson lost his latest major final in the climax of The Great Celebrity Pottery Thrown Down last Sunday.

However, a significant portion of any money owed to the Arsenal icon will have gone directly to his wife, Kate. Merson is now a successful broadcaster and pundit but has a sordid history with gambling debts from his playing career.

Promising potter Merson has spoken honestly about the struggles he endured with gambling earlier in his life. In a bid to stave off his past temptations, he lets his spouse handle most of their financial affairs.

The 58-year-old, who won two league titles, an FA Cup and the League Cup with Arsenal, is a prominent advocate for reforming the gambling industry. This comes after he battled an addiction he claims cost him £7million over the past 30 years.

He is now barred from all betting firms and says his earnings, including any fee he received from Channel 4's Great Celebrity Pottery Throw Down, go directly to his spouse in order to prevent him from squandering them.

He has also disclosed in the past that he attends Gamblers' Anonymous meetings and regularly seeks guidance from specialists to help keep his addiction in check. The retired Premier League star placed his first wager at just 16 and that initial encounter set him on a treacherous path towards gambling and cocaine dependency.

Merson may never fully kick the habit after disclosing how he back into gambling in recent years. He confessed to squandering a sum of £160,000 earmarked for a house deposit while betting on table tennis during the Covid-19 pandemic.

During the summer of 2020, he was furloughed from his role as a pundit on Sky Sports' Soccer Saturday. And despite initially relishing the additional time with his children and third wife Kate, he started to slip back into old patterns.

"My anxiety kicked in and I thought, 'They're not going to have Soccer Saturday anymore'. I was thinking, 'I'm not going to be able to earn anything,'" he told The Sun in 2022. "My older kids' mums have houses and I want to give my younger kids a future.

"Kate and I had £160,000 saved up and I blew it in a few bets. It was all online, but it wasn't a bookmaker, it was a private bookie. My last bet was £8,000 on a table tennis player. I didn't have a particular knowledge of table tennis but everything was locked down at that point, so there wasn't much to bet on.

"When I got to that point it was just a total chase-up to try and get my money back, which is a prime example of a compulsive gambler. That was my last eight grand but when I'm in the grip of it, I lose all sense of rationale."

Drawing from his own struggles, he has insisted betting firms must do more to rigorously track problem gamblers and intervene to restrain those unable to control their habits.

"I think they've got to take it in their hands," he told The Mirror in 2023. "Not keep on leaving it with the compulsive gambler. Don't throw it onto them. They need to take control. They can't just use that, 'When the fun stops, stop,' because an addict isn't going to do that.

"You know when someone's not having fun - 90 bets a day, 60 bets a day, 15 deposits a day. The limits need to be set for these people, because they won't set a limit themselves. The only time they're ever going to stop is when everything is gone. They're not going to stop until their bank account is at zero."

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Merson previously admitted on talkSPORT he wanted to break his own fingers to stop him placing a bet. That serves to illustrate the sense of helplessness he has felt in his efforts to kick the habit.

"The addiction is so overwhelming, it's scary what it does," he said. "You don't see the risk factor. If you put your hand in a fire and went to do it again, your brain would tell you, 'Son't do that again.' With addictions, the brain doesn't tell you that. The addiction wants you on your own...That's where it's dangerous.

"You start gambling and drinking, you don't come home at night, you start losing all the money, you're losing everything. You're letting people down around you so you hate yourself. Your self-worth and self-respect goes out the window and you hate yourself with a passion.

"You then think, 'How am I going to get myself out of this? I know what I'll do, I'll start drinking and gambling again'. And you do it all again. When you don't realise that you're an ill person, it's a horrible place to be.

"The only time I felt relieved was when I had nothing left. When I got to zero, I was like 'I don't have to do this anymore.' How mad is that?

"I was playing at Aston Villa, playing away at Charlton. No one ever shared a room with me because I was gambling and never slept in the afternoon and I wanted to break my fingers so I couldn't pick the phone up - that's how bad the compulsion was."