Coronation Street’s explosive storyline about gambling ­addiction really hit home for a good reason – they hired a recovered addict to advise them.

When a building yard went up in flames in the ITV soap on Friday, owner Ed Bailey was suspected of starting it to pay his gambling debts. While it remains to be seen whether Ed, played by Trevor Michael Georges, did start the fire, taking desperate measures to find funds is a scenario familiar to Colin Walsh.

Colin went to extraordinary lengths to fund his gambling over a 20-year period, including taking money from his business after he racked up debts running into thousands. Now Colin, 46, a former recruitment director, is sharing his experience of a problem that Public Health England estimates 335,000 Brits share, according to charity GamCare. As well as working as the Lived Experience Manager for the cause, which helps people overcome their addiction, he advised the ITV soap’s actors and producers on how gambling can spiral out of control.

Colin says: “It is fantastic Coronation Street is running this gambling storyline and showing how easily gambling can get out of control. I gambled for 20 years and, at its height, I was gambling daily, both online and in person at the bookies. I started at the age of 16 on a few sports, I carried on through university and by the time I left, I was gambling more regularly.”

He says his gambling worsened when, in his mid-20s, he was part of a management buyout. Becoming a director gave him more time, opportunity and money to gamble. Colin says: “People around me, including my wife and others closest to me, had no idea. “Just like Ed in Coronation Street, I became an expert at hiding my behaviour. At the height of my gambling, I had more than 10 online accounts and I would be regularly gambling large stakes online. I have never calculated how much in total, but I know it was a large chunk of cash.

“The problem is that my debts got bigger and bigger. I had credit cards, loans and overdrafts that kept increasing. In my head, I kept telling myself that I was due a big win and then everything would be OK.”

As his gambling debts spiralled, Colin even started using his company’s money to fund his corrosive habit. Things came to a head when he took his family on holiday a decade ago – he had been rumbled. Colin says: “When I started getting phone calls from work about the money, I knew the game was up. I wasn’t there to hide or deflect it but at the same time, I still didn’t want to admit it. My last bet was on the lottery. I felt like if the universe wanted me to carry on gambling, I would win the lottery – only I didn’t.”

After making the life-changing decision to confess everything and seek help to curb his addiction, Colin then had the difficult task of telling his loving wife. It was, he admits, the hardest conversation of his life. He says: “I had to start opening up, had to start living my life a different way if I wanted to get better. I always thought I just had financial problems, but by talking about it, I realised it was much bigger. It also linked to wider mental health.”

Colin’s wife was supportive and vowed to stand by him. He says: “A big weight had been lifted from my shoulders. But all that weight doesn’t disappear in the sky. It goes on someone else.” He then went to counselling sessions and Gamblers Anonymous meetings to support his recovery. He still attends weekly meetings today.

His wife controls the family finances and he has now talked to his two sons about his gambling addiction, to ensure they have the right tools to avoid repeating his mistakes. Colin says he has not gambled since he came clean, adding: “I am in a really happy place now.”

Keen to raise awareness, he hopes the Coronation Street storyline, in which Ed also confesses to his daughter that he pawned Christmas presents to fund his addiction, will make people realise they are not alone in being gambling victims. Colin explains: “My gambling was hidden, secretive and people only knew a part of me. And that’s why talking about it on Coronation Street is so important.”