CURSE OF THE LOTTO MILLIONS
Gillian Bayford won £ 148m yet says her family have disowned her. She’s not the only one to fi nd a National Lottery jackpot can bring a lot of problems
THE Beatles warn it can’t buy us love. The Bible says it’s the root of all evil. But despite these lyrical warnings against the perils of money, around 70 per cent of us still regularly buy a lottery ticket in the hope of becoming rich beyond our wildest dreams.
This week we were given yet another illustration of how unwise this might turn out to be. Gillian Bayford, 43, who – along with her husband Adrian – won £ 148million in 2012, is the latest lotto millionaire to rue the day her numbers came up.
Within 15 months of the win her marriage had broken down and now she is at war with her mother, father and brother after they became “downright nasty” despite the fact that she had showered them with £ 20million of her fortune. Yesterday the family hit back with her parents condemning her “lies” saying they’d received just £ 1million, the same as her brother Colin, who in turn called her “a complete Jekyll and Hyde”.
The sad truth is that Gillian Bayford’s catastrophic experience of sudden riches is by no means unusual. Take the case of 16- year- old Callie Rogers of Cumbria, the youngest jackpot winner when she landed £ 1.9million in 2003.
This was vast wealth for a girl who had been earning £ 3.60 an hour as a Co- op checkout assistant.
She immediately bought a bungalow for herself so she could be independent of the foster parents who had taken her in during her biological parents’ diffi cult separation and proceeded to fritter away her windfall on parties, drugs, holidays and gifts. She even blew £ 11,500 on two boob jobs.
BY 2005 she was pregnant and the pressures of growing up too fast took such a toll on her self- esteem that she made the fi rst of three suicide attempts.
Another child followed in 2007 and after breaking up with her boyfriend a year later she discovered her bank balance had dwindled.
Rogers turned her life around after meeting a fi reman and they went on to have a child together. By the summer of 2013 life was back to normal: she had a mortgage, just £ 2,000 in the bank and did her shopping at Tesco.
“I was too young to win the lottery,” she said. “I don’t think 16- year- olds should be eli- gible. It nearly broke me but thankfully I’m now stronger than ever.” Mickey Carroll was the ex- binman christened the “Lotto Lout” who was wearing an electronic tag when he bought a lucky dip ticket in 2002. At the age of 19 the selfstyled King Of Chavs scooped £ 9.7million. “Things went wrong straight away,” he said this year. “I got my fi rst death threat the day after I won and I’ve had thou-
BUT MONEY DOES BUY SOME HAPPINESS...
their friends. And, moved by the plight of a boy who’d had his leg amputated, donated a fi ve- fi gure sum for a new prosthetic limb. LUKE PITTARD and his girlfriend Emma Cox won a comparatively paltry £ 1.3million – but used it wisely. After splashing out on a new home and a lavish sands since. One said they’d chop my daughter up… I was really worried. I began sleeping with a shotgun and I kept a blade in every room of my house.”
He also bought a country mansion, a string of cars and started spending £ 12,000 a week on drugs, gambling and prostitutes.
By 2011 his millions had gone up in smoke and he was forced to take a job in a biscuit factory. Today he has a £ 400- a- week job in a slaughterhouse, lives in a modest rented fl at – and buys a lottery ticket every week.
It was a similar story with “Lotto Lag” Lee Ryan. When he wedding Pittard, 25, went back to his job at his local branch of McDonald’s in Cardiff: “They all think I’m a bit mad but I tell them there’s more to life than money. I loved working at McDonald’s before I became a millionaire and I’m really enjoying being back there again.” MEANWHILE “Lottery Les” and his future wife won £ 6.5million in 1995 Ryan – who had served three years for stealing cars some years earlier – was awaiting trial on similar charges.
He bought a £ 1million mansion, a £ 235,000 helicopter and a fl eet of fl ash cars and superbikes. Within eight years his marriage had broken up, he had lost millions in ill- fated business ventures and he was forced to sleep rough for two years.
Today Ryan makes a precarious living as a cameraman but is grateful that his win diverted him from a life of crime: “If I had not won the lottery I would probably now be doing life.” Scadding delighted fans of his football club Newport County after winning a £ 45million EuroMillions jackpot with his ex- wife in 2009.
After investing enough in the non- league side to enable it to gain promotion to League Two after a 25- year absence he resigned as chairman in order to spend more time at his holiday home in Barbados.