What would you do if you won the lottery? It’s something we’ve all fantasised about, surely? Would the money go straight into property – a London pied-à-terre, a Somerset sprawl, an Italian farmhouse, perhaps? Sounds lovely. Or maybe you’d become a philanthropist, investing the cash in causes from rescuing kittens to curing cancer. Or, as in the new romcom The Ballad of Wallis Island, you’d spend it on something a little more niche, like getting your favourite musicians together to perform a private concert. That’s the dream, anyway. The nightmare is that you lose all sense of self and turn into a walking, talking cash machine, unable to trust anyone, and harassed over the spoils for the rest of your life.
When the news came this week that one ticketholder in Ireland had scooped a record-breaking EuroMillions lottery jackpot of £208m, all I could think about was the nightmare. Surely that amount of money, appearing in your bank account out of nowhere, can’t lead to anything healthy? At the risk of sounding like a harbinger of doom (or just jealous), nothing in life comes without a price. Case in point: this week, there were also reports that a woman who won a £6m mansion in a £10 Omaze draw has been denied the keys, and is now embroiled in a lengthy planning battle. Still, her life has changed beyond recognition overnight. “It’s just crazy,” Vicky Curtis-Cresswell told the press. “One week we’re worrying about our old car breaking down, the next thing we’ve got a £6m house.”
