BEYOND the DREAMS of AVARICE

Last night, at least one life in Britain was transformed. The capped EuroMillions jackpot of more than £161.5 million was won by a single ticket purchased in these islands. The ticket may have been bought by a syndicate but even if, say, ten individuals share the spoils, the world is different for each of them now.

As I write, no one has yet approached Camelot to claim the money. Hence Camelot has released no information about the winner(s) though it will have access to a certain amount of data, in particular precisely where the ticket was purchased. The winner(s) may decide on anonymity, in which case Camelot is obliged to remain shtum. If I were a winner, I would insist upon it.

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Obviously such sudden wealth solves any number of one’s problems – not all of them perhaps, but the option of throwing money at a problem can be a big help. But coming into big bucks, especially by such arbitrary means, poses large problems of its own. Everybody – by whom I mean the media – wants to know “how you’re going to spend the money” but that is the least pressing of the new multimillionaire’s concerns. Much more important and urgent is the immediate response. This is very tricky, especially because it has to be considered in a state of high excitement, but how the transformation is handled in the first minutes and hours will have defining and far-reaching consequences.

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The first necessity is an absolutely cool head. It’s easy for me to advocate dispassionately that anonymity is the answer but I go further. My immediate advice would be simple: tell no one. My circumstances would make this a relatively straightforward gambit for me. I have a partner in whom I have total and absolute trust who happily shares with me utterly the conviction that secrecy is of the essence. There is no one else in the household. I have almost no family left and our friends are scattered and in contact much more often by phone, email, letter or social network than face-to-face. Circumstances would permit us to control the pace of events very readily.

Living in a family and in a highly socialised community would make discretion very much harder. Nonetheless, the dangers of the news spreading are huge and dangerous. Once anyone who cannot keep a secret knows the identity of the winner, everyone will. The website of The Mirror, for instance, is currently asking its readers: “Do you know the winner? Call us”. No doubt there’s money in it for anyone ready to betray a confidence.

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Why not tell everyone? Think about it. Multimillionaires don’t live in the community at large. They have privacy, space, security and the support and comradeship of their wealthy peers. They live in inaccessible mansions within enclaves of discretion, they travel everywhere by chauffeured car and helicopter or private jet, they stay in impossibly exclusive hotels or at private retreats and they eat out at places you’ve never heard of. You’ve got a lot of adjusting to do in order to join them.

The new multimillionaire – let’s say it’s a middle-aged widow called Mabel – does not live like that. Her suburban semi has a double lock on the front door but no professional burglar would need more than a couple of minutes to gain access. If he took her beloved Yorkshire terrier and demanded a £10 million ransom, she’d be devastated.

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With astonishing speed, Mabel would be overwhelmed in every sense by begging letters. “How did they get my address?” she wonders, forgetting that the accounts of her life that appeared with her agreement in the papers made it easy enough for people to trace her. And since the dozens of sweaty reporters have stopped knocking at her door, there has been a steady stream of rather alarming men in bad suits who have been trying to get her to put her money into various “sure-fire schemes” as they call them. Mabel should be glad she does not own a computer. Her mailbox would be full of emails begging, wheedling and proposing. And talking of proposing, the recently divorced dentist who has never given her the time of day before has suddenly decided that he likes her and has been wanting to take her out for a meal. He gives her the creeps.

Mabel, who has led a fairly solitary life since her husband died, finds she has unimagined friends on every street corner. People whisper about her in the street and stand outside her house pointing. Friends and relatives have made it pretty clear that they think she could afford to pass on to them some of her wealth – which, one or two of them have said outright, is “undeserved”. It has occurred to her that she could give a million to each of several old friends and deserving causes but she also realises that the number who seem to feel a certain entitlement to be included in such a scheme already exceeds 161.

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It’s not too surprising that everyone wants to be the friend of someone suddenly rich and lucky. But that supposed friendship doesn’t run very deep and is dependent on the lucky one being prepared to spread it around, including to the supposed friend. Mabel would not be the first lottery winner to discover that many people, not excluding family and friends she thought she liked and could trust, quickly resent the luck that has fallen on someone other than them. Some lottery winners have come to feel that the win is much more of a curse than a benison.

Were I the lucky winner, I would keep absolutely quiet. I would spurn Camelot’s desire to come to my own home to proclaim me the winner. And I would certainly not want to be photographed with a fixed grin spraying cheap champagne around in a bad parody of the racing driver cliché. Indeed, unless I were obliged by some legal requirement to disclose it, I should not reveal my address or even the county in which I live to Camelot. I should make an appointment to come to their offices in London, being careful not to allow them to guess whether or not I need to travel to London or am already there.

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I should demur at drinking their doubtless vile champagne (“Moët? I’m sorry, I can afford a little better, I suggest, and so can you”) and I would immediately stamp on their breathless and insincere cries of “congratulations”, pointing out that I have achieved nothing save for accidentally buying the ticket that won (“I submit that ‘lucky git’ would be more appropriate to the circumstances”). I would require them not to reveal anything about me or about where I bought the ticket – the corner shop would be sure to instigate an intense local search. I would let them know that if word of my win got out, I should assume that their discretion had failed and consult my solicitors.

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I don’t know whether Camelot presumes to advise on spending the money. Doubtless there are multimillion lottery winners whose imaginations cannot stretch further than buying a larger caravan. They might need a little guidance. For my part, I should make no decisions about putting the money to work until I had given the matter mature consideration, save that – had last night’s win been mine – I should want to take immediate steps to transfer an initial £5 million to the Disasters Emergency Committee for disbursing to the refugee camps in Somalia. Larger donations of that kind I would want to delay in order to be able to see first-hand that the funds were properly spent.

The immediate help Camelot could be, for my money, would be to take me through the options for the first, temporary resting-place for the fortune. I would not be putting it into my present bank because I could not be certain that some employee at the local branch would not talk. Equally, one wouldn’t want £160 million to sit in a financial institution that is in danger of turning up its toes, nor one that would decline to allow one to move all or a large proportion of the money without a lot of notice.

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In my fantasy version of the scenario, I book myself a couple of nights at a splendid London hotel: Claridge’s, perhaps. I come up to town in time to purchase a couple of good suits and all the accompanying garments as well as some smart luggage and I change before checking into the hotel in the new guise of a man of means. I also dress accordingly for joining the Camelot people so that they and any banking people I meet subsequently have a sense of dealing with someone who knows what he is about. One needs to let Camelot know that one’s intention to preserve anonymity is firm. A fool and his money are soon parted, the old and wise saying goes, and one would need to keep one’s own folly deep under wraps.

An unaccustomed multimillionaire will be prey to endless intruders – beggars, shysters, false friends, fair weather acquaintances, crooks, snake-oil salesmen and wrinkle-browed advisors. I fit into the last category but, luckily for Mabel, the odds against her coming across my wise advice are even longer than were the odds against her landing the most lucrative win ever known in these islands.