Euromillions winner joins UK’S wealthiest with £170m jackpot

Why the lucky recipients of Britain’s biggest ever jackpot shouldn’t count themselves super-rich.

ONE UK ticketholder has won the £170 million Euromillions jackpot, to become the country’s biggest ever winner.

The player matched all five main numbers and the two lucky stars in Tuesday’s draw following the game’s longest series of rollovers. They will immediately count themselves among the top 1,000 richest people in Britain, leapfrogging actors, artists and celebrities, including Jimmy Page, the Led Zeppelin founder and guitarist, who is worth £125 million, Ed Sheeran, the singersongwriter, who is worth £160million and Rory Mcilroy, the golfer, who is worth £138million.

Andy Carter, senior winners’ adviser at the National Lottery, said: “One incredibly lucky ticket-holder has scooped the enormous £170 million Euromillions jackpot. Players all across the country are urged to check their tickets as soon as possible.”

The previous biggest UK winners were Colin and Chris Weir, from Largs in North Ayrshire, Scotland, who won £161million in July 2011.

There are few things more likely to be ruinous than schemes for personal enrichment. And one of several failed initiatives I have incubated over the years was to teach the very rich how to enjoy themselves.

My simple idea was to say “Look at me, follow me and do exactly what I do”. The problem here was that my illustrative idea of a good time was some desultory tennis followed by a long lunch in the sunshine with attractive and amusing friends. “And how much does that cost?” someone asked. “Actually, not a lot,” I had to confess.

So, this week’s “lucky” £170million lottery winners have a big problem with their small fortune, for it is nowhere near enough to feel, in these inflationary days, rich. I mean, not seriously rich. Not when Killik, an investment adviser, warns that putting two 13-year-olds through school will now cost precisely £905,600. And that, according to Coutts’ Luxury Price Index, the cost of luxury inflation has risen by 2.9 per cent over the last year, with food and alcohol seeing the sharpest spikes.

That’s not to say there aren’t infinite ways to splash out – even if your millions won’t get you as far as they once did. Take the Gulfstream G650, a plane that will travel at nearly the speed of sound (at which point you can actually hear your cash burning) and has a range of 8,000 miles (so you can escape vengeful creditors). It costs $65million (£53million). There are currently 200 customers anxious to save just 30 minutes on, say, a transatlantic journey.

Instead, I would recommend one of the new-generation VLJS (Very Light Jets), including the Hondajet and Cessna Citation M2. Or an Embraer Phenom at a mere $9 million.

Many of the best things in life are not free, but very expensive indeed. As Dorothy Parker said, if you want to know what God thinks about money, just look at the people he gives it to. The Very Rich are different to you and me because they have much more money.

Psychologists know that this makes them behave badly; Michael Lewis, author of Moneyball (net worth, by some estimates, $313million) said great wealth “triggers a chemical reaction on the privileged few. It tilts their brains.” Multiple studies show that the very rich fail to read emotions and that, given the chance, they will run you down in traffic.

Yet, doing so in a classic car might be tricky when there’s only £170 million to play with; a 1962 Ferrari 250 GTO was sold for just over £39.6million last year. And this year, a Bugatti “Voiture Noire” reached a record for a new car of £15.5million – before it had even run.

Of course, lottery winners will need a cellar, but it will not be a very full one if tastes run to the rare Domaine de la Romanee Conti wines, Burgundy’s finest. A 1945 bottle recently sold for £424,000. Or what about a bar stocked with fine single malts? You would have to be careful who exactly you invite for cocktails when a 55-year-old Macallan can fetch £163,937. And with £170million, you have not got your foot even on the bottom rung of the property ladder. When people say that the luxury market is softening, they are wrong. A penthouse at 220 Central Park West was recently sold to an Illinois hedgie for $238million. Magnificently, he explained that it was just somewhere to stay when he was in town. In London, Foxton’s recently sold an apartment in One Hyde Park for £160million.

These lottery riches would not, for example, allow you to build much of an art collection. For instance, a Jeff Koons does not leave much change from $100million: his awful Rabbit was sold in New York last May for $91million. And £170million does not get you near Leonardo territory. The equally awful

Salvator Mundi was sold for $450million and is, in any case, likely a fake. If the one real Leonardo still in private hands (in Poland) ever got to market, I reckon it would reach a billion. Instead, I would advise our lottery winners to start collecting masterpiece photographs. They could buy a signed Cartier-bresson print for only several hundred thousand.

Nor will £170million get you into superyacht waters. Mohammad bin Salman spent $500million on his. Instead, you could afford to charter an Uber and ride to Plymouth to visit Princess, one of the world’s big-four manufacturers of mid-size motor-yachts. To give you a harrowing sense of how poor you are and how many Quite Rich people there are in the world, every single year Princess delivers around 280 vessels costing about £7million.

So, there is some small scope for encouragement for the lottery winners. But impressive sports sponsorship is, alas, out of the question. You would need to spend £765.5million to replicate Manchester City’s current squad. Forget about motor-racing, too: Mercedes-benz and Ferrari have annual budgets of about $400 million. Still, you could build a very competitive karting team.

By what cruel calculous does £170million not make you feel free? I fear the lottery winners will soon discover. I’d advise reading Thoreau, the hermit who believed you can count yourself rich by the things you can do without. And a $65million jet is likely one of them.

‘Such winnings would not, for instance, allow you to build much of an art collection’