Would winning £184million on the Lottery make you happy?

Conventional wisdom is that most who hit the jackpot end up divorced, bankrupt or lonely. But HUNTER DAVIES, who’s written a book about them, says the reality is much more cheering

their names and locations to protect their privacy.

So for the next year I had access to 20 winners, able to observe and record the dramatic changes in their lives in my book Living On The Lottery.

Like most people, when fantasising about winning while standing in the queue to buy their tickets, they were telling themselves: ‘Oh, if I win, you won’t see me for dust. I will be on a tropical island and I will give most of the money away to help poor people, cure cancer, feed the starving, oh yes.’ In the event, a year later, not one had moved abroad. Mostly, they moved only about ten miles away, to a slightly bigger house but still roughly in the same area.

Only five per cent had given anything to charity, though they had enormously helped their own families. Were they happier having won all this money? This was somewhat harder to work out.

So I asked endless questions, and let the winners evaluate their own lives. And my conclusion? That about 90 per cent were indeed happier. If you think about it, much of modern stress is caused by not enough money – not enough food for the children, no proper accommodation, no work. It is pretty clear that money can help ease such problems.

But a myth has grown that winning a lot of money will not make you happy. This is generally accepted folklore, handed down through the generations. But really, it is a compensation myth, to comfort those who don’t win. Among my winners, there were some with chronic illnesses who were now able to pay for treatment or facilities.

One was suffering multiple sclerosis, but thanks to his win, he was able to equip his house with lifts and devices to make life more bearable.

When people read of the big winners who ended up divorcing, they go: ‘Tut-tut, see: money drove them apart.’

But we rarely know what their life was really like before their win. Those in unhappy or abusive relationships are often forced – by poverty or circumstance – to remain together.

One of the couples I followed over that year did split – but she then confessed she had been unfaithful. She had been living a lie in a sterile marriage. She was a teacher and having an affair with her married headmaster.

After the couple won, they split the money and amicably divorced. She married the headmaster and started a new life.

So did her husband. I kept in touch with him for some years and visited him in a castle in Scotland where he was happily living with his new wife. All thanks to his lottery win.

Of the 20 winners I followed, only one, thinking long and hard, considered themselves to be less happy a year after their win. This was a single man, living in digs, who was working as a kitchen-hand in a Durham college at the time of

90 per cent of winners were happier a year after their huge windfall

his win. He always regretted going public about his win. He felt embarrassed and disliked all the fuss.

Looking back, he thought the single happiest time in his life had been just before his win when, having been an unemployed painter for some years, he had suddenly got the kitchen job.

Various surveys have backed up what I found – that the vast majority of winners are happier.

It’s not the flash conspicuous expenditure on Ferraris that satisfies but the feeling of financial security, the ability to help friends and family, to fulfil daydreams.

Alas, pre-winning fantasies of helping humanity and giving to charity are rarely fulfilled.

In my survey of 20 winners, most had indeed helped their own family but only two had given anything altruistically to charity. And just modest amounts. But they promised themselves they would give more, one day.

So what would I do with £184 million? If my wife were still alive, she would tell me to leave nothing to our children. Instead, leave it all to the Chancellor of the Exchequer. ‘I know he will spend it wisely,’ she used to say. ‘On your bike,’ I would reply.

But thanks to her prompting, we had always given away money from our various books to charities, which I have continued, such as to Marie Curie and the Cumbria Community Fund.

All the advance from my present book, The Heath, has gone to a local charity, the Heath and Hampstead Society.

And what do I get out of giving away money?

A warm glow, of course…