THERE ARE not many people who can say they played Omar Sharif at backgammon in the Monte Carlo Casino at 18 years of age, but Andrew Windsor is one of them.

Not that the director of e-commerce at SMG knew it at the time. He had become a regular fixture in the casino's elaborate reception one summer while he was working as a French tour guide.

He regularly took tourists there, but because he was too young to go inside he would wait in the reception while they enjoyed a holiday flutter.

One day, a member of staff took pity on him and asked if he would like to see the inner circle - the room at the heart of the casino where there were no limits to the stakes that gamblers could put down.

"It was just like in James Bond," he says, with a look that conjures up glittering ball gowns and expressionless Orientalmen."Peoplewereputting down £10,000 stakes at the card table and thinking nothing of it."

He stood there, mesmerised by the click-clack of cards before eventually being distracted by an empty backgammon table. Despite his tender years, he wasaverytalentedbackgammonplayer, having learned the game fromhis father.

"I have a brain that can do these things. It's not a good idea to play me at backgammon," he laughs.

When an Arab man with a moustache invited him to play a game while he waited for his group, he was only too happy to start counting out the pieces.

True to form, he won two games out of three. It was only afterwards that one of the staff told him he had just beaten the star of Dr Zhivago.

"That's my claim to fame!" he says with a self-deprecating smile. It was not the end of his affection for casinos, however.

At university in Manchester several years later, he earned £1000 a night as the house backgammon player in a local casino. Given that many people would have decided to ditch the studies and fill their wardrobe with tuxedoes at this point, SMG must be glad he chose the stability of a career instead.

He arrived at the Glasgow broadcaster just over a year ago after many yearsinthetravelindustry,most recently as commercial director of lastminute.com and managing director of Thomas Cook.

Since then, good fortune seems to have followed him. In early February, he and two of his children were involved in a nasty head-on collision with another vehicle at 60mph, but they emergedwith only broken bones.

"We were told that 10 years ago we would all have been dead. Car safety reallyhasimproved,"hesays,still sounding slightly rattled now that he is back at work.

Likeallcommercialbroadcasters, SMG knew it had to find an answer to the perpetual decline of television ratings and advertising revenues. Windsor was lured to Glasgow to temporarily help develop an internet strategy.

While ITV bought Friends Reunited andChannel4plottedamoveinto radio, Windsor built up SMG's stv.tv website to include things like bingo, Monopoly and dating services.

Just as Scottish bingo halls were taking a pounding from the smoking ban, STV's online version turned out to be a hit. The unexpected beauty of it, says Windsor, is that you don't actually have to play it to play it.

Onceyouhavesignedawayyour credit card details and bought a bingo card,thecomputerannouncesthe ballsandcrossesoffyournumbers. This allows the players to get on with talking to one another over the chat facility.

"It's more about the chat than the bingo," says Windsor, who decided to stay on permanently after his first six months. "We are ahead of expectations and the average usage per player is significantly ahead of our partner's UK average."

The website, which has about 200,000 unique monthly users and around 10% monthly growth, also offers a variety of casino games. Despite their personal attraction to Windsor, however, they have been kept low-key because they do not fit with how the focus groups see STV.

"Our brand is not a gambling brand, it's a gaming brand. There is a subtle difference," he says.

The same intelligence has made the companydecidetoavoidoffering financial advice, for example, although it is hard to see how this squares with last year's purchase of consumer comparison site peopleschampion.com.

Stv.tv is also developing its journalistic content, which currently falls under sections for news, entertainment and sport. To this end, it was announced earlier this month that Henry Eagles, head of sport, will also oversee online journalism.

At present, visitors are offered the usual range of stories plus some video reports, together with viewable versions ofScotlandTodayandNorth Tonight.

Assuming it fits with the intentions of Rob Woodward, SMG's chief executive who recently came to power in a coup andisreviewingeverythinginthe business, Windsor's plan is to take this much further this year.

"We want to broaden the proposition to includelifestyle, health, motoring, homes and possibly also travel.

"At minimum we will offer text-based information. At maximum we will be selling holidays," he says, although he stresses that the latter is unlikely.

This may see new hirings, although much of the work will be done by the existing(somewouldsayover-burdened) staff.

Partofthe strategy is to use the specialistinformationgleanedfrom newprogrammelaunches,which startedwithDrivetime,theStephen Jardine-frontedmotorshow.Atthe same time, journalists are expected to recognise that the culture must change.

Windsorsays:"We'reworkingon getting the news team to think about online. It's no longer just a 30-second interview on the television. It's also a four or five-minute interview online".

The other great white hope at SMG is broadband television. Last November, it quietly launched an entirely separate site called scotlandonTV.tv that will gradually make the vast programming archive available online.

Partly with the expatriate market in mind, the impressive site offers a range of programmes like Weir's Way, High Road and back-bulletins of Scotland Today.

Some obvious attractions, such as old football and rugby matches, will only appearoncenegotiationswiththeir respectiveassociationsarecompleted.

SMG has also been testing the market for dedicated content. Most recently it made a piece about the world's largest bagpipe factory. Not only did this see a big rise in traffic, it led to requests from pipe bands in Rome and Arkansas to come and film them.

Windsor says that before making any effort to market the site, the next stage is to decide how best to make money from it. SMG wants to use it to sell advertising, subscription and also pay-per-view, and it has identified five subject areas that it thinks viewers will pay for.

Windsor will not say what they are, but it seems unlikely that much vintage RangersorCelticfootagewillbe appearing free of charge. The biggest draws so far have included an interview with Manchester United manager Alex Ferguson and an Archie Gemmell goal from the 1978 World Cup.

Although Woodward's review makes everything somewhat uncertain at the moment, the broadcaster's stated plan has been that 25% of revenues come from non-mainstream spot advertising by 2010. SMG will not say what the level is at present, but it would certainly have been almost zero before the second half of last year.

With a flash of the same confidence that must have put paid to Omar Sharif, Windsor says this should be the least that is possible.

He says: "We can achieve significantly more than that. If we continue to provide acommunity-basedScottishservice across a range of sectors, we have a brand that has a right to be in those spaces and consumers will realise that."