Is it really lucky to win the Mark Six?
YES According to my mother the first word I ever spoke was not 'mama' or 'dada'. She swears the first word I ever spoke was 'more'. This is highly indicative of my later life.
I love money and I want more. Maybe you don't. Maybe you think materialism is shallow. Maybe you think avarice is a sin. Maybe you think the rampant pursuit of wealth lacks meaning. Well, that's just fine. It means more money for me. Greed is good and I tell you we're talking about a major appetite here. My stomach is rumbling for money. I am starving for the stuff. I want to gorge myself on dollar bills until I vomit small change.
But there's a problem. I don't have any. None. I remember walking out of a pub in Soho in London and being accosted by a tramp. This guy was wearing plastic bags on his feet instead of shoes. He yelled at me: 'I've got more money than you, you yuppie bastard.' I ignored the worthless dog and carried on my way. It was only when I received my bank statement the next day that I realised he was spot on. I didn't have any money - I had other people's money. I had debts. I was worth absolutely nothing. My life was prefixed by minus signs. The tramp was better off than I was.
That was when I decided I needed money fast. In this I have failed. The tramp is still better off than me. Even though I earn more and have more possessions, my debts are bigger and the minus signs are just as prominent in my life.
So when the call comes through from the boys down at the Mark Six office telling me I have won a few million bucks, I can guarantee my first thought is not going to be: 'God, I'm so unlucky.' Anyone who argues it is bad luck to get a great deal of money for doing nothing is a prat.
If my friends suddenly start clamouring for cash, they can't have been friends in the first place. I don't care if my family hassles me for money because I can't stand my family. Telling them to sod off would be to replay an already familiar refrain.
But what about me? Will I change if I win a tonne of cash? Will I hanker back to the days of old when I was poor and happy? No chance, pal. I will be far too busy worshipping the God of Hedonism to bother with that kind of crap. Some people are never happy. It's almost as if they need to be sad to give them an angle on life. They are pessimism pros - gloomy, doomy and dull. I can't be bothered with that. Give me a few million and just watch me enjoy it. Believe me, if I want you to be my friend, I'll buy you.
NO Years ago, I happened to hear a winner of the Irish lottery being interviewed on radio. As she had been instantaneously enriched by some staggering amount of money, the interviewer was naturally curious to know how this would affect her daily routine. 'It won't change my life in any way,' the young woman announced firmly.
About a year later, someone told me that the poor girl (metaphorically speaking, that is) was in a mental institution, unable to cope with the twin pressures of a boyfriend whose aim in life had narrowed to total alcohol consumption and a postbag full of begging letters. Human nature being what it is, the person who passed on this information could barely keep the glee out of her voice, thereby underlining my gloomy conviction that money brings out the worst in human nature.
Don't get me wrong. I'm sure it would provide a heartwarming start to the Year of the Rat if my bank account were to be increased by, say, $50,000. Or $100,000 - no, no, make that $150,000. That's the problem: whatever it is, it's never enough. Every time I've played that well-known fantasy game What Would You Do If You Won $10 Million?, a discontented friend soon pipes up that it won't pay for the boat, the house and the car, so please can we make it at least $50 million? And how much should one give one's family before they start taking you to court, like Poon Yuk-lam who has immersed herself in nine legal actions in the past five years in an attempt to retrieve a winning Mark Six ticket from her ex-husband? The amount concerned is a mere $1.5 million but it effectively ended the Poons' marriage, which seems pretty costly - not to mention inauspicious - to me.
Though not, perhaps, as high a price as that paid by the ill-named Joy Senior who killed herself and her three children in Britain because she thought she'd ruined her boyfriend's chances of winning the lottery. Then there was Tim O'Brien who shot himself because he hadn't renewed what he believed was a winning sequence of numbers; it was later revealed that he'd got the numbers wrong and would only have won ?25 ($320) anyway. One winner who'd had a brick through her window and phone threats, advised others, 'Don't tell a living soul.' Where's the luck and happiness in that? At least in Hong Kong there's a limit to the amount you can win - $38 million has been the ceiling on the fantasy here since 1992. Would I turn it down if I won? Frankly, no, but as I haven't bought a Mark Six ticket in three years, that's unlikely to happen. Life's complicated and uncertain enough already without trying to come to terms with a fiscal upheaval for which I've had no preparation and a dream which might just turn into a nightmare.
