Gambling addiction charities have attacked the £265 million salary that founder and joint CEO of online gambling firm bet365 Denise Coates CBE pays herself as “disgraceful” and “obscene”.

Recent articles in the press have listed the misery caused by gambling debts, and the rising number of suicides as a result, as the “terrible price paid” to fund Coates’s income, which makes her one of the highest paid women in the world.