THIS week we’re doing lunch. It’s the pragmatic choice — my interviewee, Allan Solomon, executive vice-president of the American casino operator Isle of Capri, has yet to take an office in Britain, so we meet at L’Escargot, in London’s Soho. It seems a casino operator kind of thing to do.

And anyway, Florida-based Solomon, trimly moustached and a dead ringer for Mel Brooks’s better-dressed, younger brother, looks like he might appreciate a nice meal.

He had hoped to be building a string of American-style casinos here by now, but has found himself stymied by the British government’s sudden change of heart over gambling liberalisation. He is not alone. A clutch of American operators are now trundling round Britain, puzzling over what happens next.

“Yeah, we’ve spent a lot of money looking for sites,” says Solomon, “under the assumption that there would be a number of larger-scale casinos, then we were disappointed when that number was reduced to eight, and really disappointed when that was reduced to one.”

He studies his smoked-salmon starter pensively. Solomon, aged 69 but looking 10 years younger — “it’s the Florida climate” — has been jetting in and out of Britain for three years now, attempting to establish a beachhead for the Isle of Capri invasion.

His company, which he co-founded with chairman Bernie Goldstein in 1992, is already one of America’s top 10 publicly listed gambling businesses, with a $1 billion (£560m) turnover and a host of Caribbean-themed sites along the Mississippi and elsewhere. He has just had one river boat wiped out by Hurricane Katrina in Biloxi. It never rains but it pours.

Isle of Capri’s British interests include a £6m investment in the Ricoh Arena, Coventry’s new exhibition centre and football stadium, which includes space for a 130,000 sq ft casino. Options on other sites were also taken.

That was before the British government, following a concerted scare campaign during the last general election, changed its mind and announced it would approve only one regional, super-casino — 1,250 slot machines, 50 gaming tables, live entertainment — to be run as a pilot.

An advisory panel will pick the site, reporting to the government before next autumn. It will also choose sites for eight medium-sized and eight smaller casinos — all rather bigger than what was allowed before but not enough to excite the overseas operators.

In short, what was going to be a gung-ho liberalisation has slipped into bureaucratic quicksand, leaving Isle of Capri, which prides itself on being first to market in its target localities, desperate to get that pilot-site tag. Solomon had been on Radio 4’s Today programme, just hours before we met, banging the drum about his Coventry project.

But he faces fierce competition. Last week Las Vegas Sands, another American operator, announced that it had been given approval by Glasgow city council to develop a £120m entertainment complex, including a Las Vegas-style casino.

Harrah’s, which now owns Caesars Palace in Las Vegas, wants to build a £75m casino in the new Wembley stadium. MGM Mirage and others have also been looking around. South African Sol Kerzner wants a casino at the Millennium Dome. That’s before you even start listing the British contenders.

Who’s going to get the nod? “Right now,” says Solomon, making his pitch, “Coventry is the only one ready to go. In Glasgow, they have just outlined the planning, they (Las Vegas Sands) have loads of things still to do.”

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