Lottery Winners - Could it be you?

Four syllables guaranteed to grab your attention. Ea-sy mon-ey. Apartd ends up worse than before. Can it be that hard to be super rich? Sometimes it can, reveals Emma Gardiner. from the puritans amongst you, it's what every adult in the country craves and multimillion pound empires have been built exploiting that craving. From alchemy in the middle ages to the gee gees at Ascot, every punter is after the same thing. Big returns from a small stake.

Playing the lottery is easily the most popular form of gambling in the bid for that elusive pot of gold. It takes the least skill and enjoys the worst odds, but it is also the lowest stake for the highest possible return. Each Saturday night (and now on Wednesdays, too) Camelot lines its coffers by exploiting our dreams of becoming filthy rich without lifting a finger.

And there are those it happens to. We all read the tabloid stories, but what is it really like to be a Lottery millionaire? They are quite simply extraordinary people. Not because they themselves are particularly interesting or different, but because of the way in which we, the public, see them. They are a modern phenomenon.

Society endows all monied people with status. Whether it's family money, earned by hard graft or through six lucky numbers, those with cash are viewed with a certain awe. The difference with Lottery millionaires is that we also feel we justified in judging them. Maybe because our #1 stake has contributed to their newly bulging wallet? After all, if we don't have the money we damn well want to know what exactly they are going to do with theirs.

Funnily enough, it's not actually very interesting. Some go spend crazy. Mel Eddison shared a #2.5 million jackpot and within months had famously spent the lot living it up. In the end all he had to show for it was a couple of flash cars and a castle in Wales which was a struggle to run, but he was more than happy that he'd had the time of his life.

At the other end of the spectrum there's the couple who haven't told a soul they've won, not even their own children. They've banked the lot and moved to the country where they live in a large house with the cover story that they are the live-in estate caretakers. Or worse, Philip and Shirley Hunter who scooped #1.3 million but decided to stay in their council house and not even trade in their second-hand Ford Escort. Quite frankly, why bother playing?

For most of the lottery winners I interviewed, the sequence of events is the same; buy a big house, buy a flash car, go on the standard 'luxury' holiday or cruise, buy presents for friends and family and then invest the rest for the future. That's basically it.

What is interesting is when you start finding out about their lives several months down the line, the good old nitty gritty of life. It's surprising how hard it is to get satisfactory answers to the simplest question, like what do Lottery millionaires do all day? They will talk till the proverbial cows come home about how they chose their numbers, what they felt like the moment they won (and let me tell you there isn't a great deal of variety in that one) and what they've spent it on. But dig a little deeper and it gets more interesting.

Mike Antonucci won nearly #3 million on July 15, 1995. It was just in the nick of time. "Life before the lottery was a bit of a struggle to be honest," he admitted when we met on his speedboat moored in Plymouth Harbour.

Mike's father had built a seafront fish and chip business from nothing. When Mike took over he decided to diversify and an antiques business was born. But over the years the recession took its toll and before his windfall, Mike, 49, was essentially bankrupt facing repossession on the flat he lived in with his mother and brother John. His only investment was forking out what little money he had on the Lottery. Obviously the millions were like manna from heaven. Mike's sister Maria Wood said: "My father always said the big one was coming to our house. I'm just sorry he wasn't around to see it."

The first thing Mike did was buy a new headstone for his father's grave and then pay off his debts. He bought a new house for his mother and brother and then started to spend. A house, a Mercedes convertible, a speedboat, jetski, foreign holidays and then, unable to resist, some business investments. He bought into a seafront nightclub, fitted out a recording studio above his new furniture warehouse and set up a pine furniture shop in one of Plymouth's shopping centres. He also bought an abandoned building project on the harbour front and got himself a new girlfriend 20 years his junior. He even recorded and released a single about winning the Lottery called 'It Could Be You'.

Mike is still what he's always been, a wheeler-dealer. But now it's on a bigger scale. As his sister admits, he's heading back where he came from. "I shout at him about money. We don't argue, I shout at him because he has rather a large entourage of people who are happy to spend it for him. I think he wastes his money when other people spend it. I sometimes have to remind him that although he won the money he's only really got back what he lost over the years. He's been given a second chance."

Maria states up front that her brother is spending more than his businesses are earning, but Mike is untroubled both by the spending and the viability of his business interests: "It's my money, I'll decide how I spend it and if I blow it then it's down to me. If I make a mistake then it's my fault." I'm left with the uneasy feeling that it will all go wrong for him and he'll still believe it's through no fault of his own.

Mike, it seems, has tried to buy happiness and lived the stereotyped life of a millionaire, not a mistake another big winner, Esther Tracy, will ever make. It's very easy to go with a first impression of Esther and look no deeper. She's a large girl in her mid-twenties with a heavy East End London accent and is not what you would describe as articulate.

Esther worked in a local supermarket before she won the Lottery and for a long time after her #1.3 million landed she rented a flat just a few miles away from the grim council estate she grew up in. A year after winning, Esther had bought a second hand Fiesta to learn to drive in, gone to see Grease the musical 35 times and spent every day with her unemployed friends bowling, shopping or at the cinema.

She made her dream come true by spending a couple of weeks in Florida's Disneyland, but more often than not she spends her holidays enjoying the simple pleasures of Blackpool. Most people's reaction is that she simply doesn't understand the impact the money should be making on her life. The truth is that Esther knows that money doesn't make the slightest bit of difference to your life.

I spent a weekend in Blackpool with Esther and it was fun with nothing flash about it at all. We went to the Pleasure Beach, took a train ride up the pier, had our palms read and played Bingo. We ate ice cream and fish and chips.

What made an impact on me was that when she said repeatedly, "I was happy before the win and I'm happy now. Money doesn't make a difference to that." I genuinely believe her.

She said: "The only difference it's made to me is that I could do some of the things I always dreamed of, like going to Planet Hollywood." The only dreams that remain for Esther are dreams that millions of young women have - find a nice bloke, settle down and have a family.

So, next time you tear up your red printout slip and awake to the cold realisation that another month of plugging away at your client base awaits you, just remember that the old adage could really be true after all; there is no such thing as 'easy' money.

Emma Gardiner is a producer for Live TV. She recently made a series of programmes about Lottery winners.

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