No 92: EuroMillions lottery
Fancy your chances in this record EuroMillions lottery today, then?
Bien sûr and danke, baby! I can smell that £85 million in my current account. Of course, winning won’t change me. I’ll still live in Kent, just all of it.
Good luck, mate. Somebody at Camelot said that tickets were going like the clappers, hundreds of thousands a day, up 300 per cent. What is it, then, some EU subsidy to farmers?
No, for once. But it is played in a lot of EU-type places that combine their national lotteries for this big one. There’s us, France, Spain, Austria, Belgium, Ireland, Luxembourg, Portugal and Switzerland.
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The odds must be a bit long then.
A trifling 76 million to one to scoop the pool.
Wow, that’s, what, longer than on George Galloway mentioning the word “regret”?
Far shorter. You’re more than five times as likely to win a lotto compared with our lottery. It’s a lot of dosh because there have been nine rollovers since the last win. That was in November.
Tempting. Is it tricky to play?
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Nah, you just pick five numbers from one to 50 and two “lucky star” numbers from one to nine.
I see, just like getting on to an NHS waiting list, then.
Very similar, except with shorter odds. There are 12 combinations that can win a prize and being just one number off the jackpot often means getting, oh, a few hundred thousand pounds tax-free. Are you dribbling?
Salivating. Mind you, sudden wealth can cause problems.
True. Remember Dolores McNamara from Limerick? She won £79 million last May. Since then there have been kidnap threats and she’s been forced to give her six children personal security alarms and live abroad while a new 38-acre estate is developed.
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Thirty-eight acres! And to think that I was only going to buy 70 tickets when I’ve got enough here for 300 if we don’t eat this week!
Do say: This is grotesque, I’m giving half to charities.
Don’t say: If I remortgage the house, sell the car and auction my job on eBay, I could buy a lot more tickets.