A new Lotto ad shows an old couple whose numbers came up and are now grappling with a ridiculously cumbersome yacht, struggling to back it into a space in a marina, as diners on a neighbouring boat look on in mild disgust.
“Nicer problems to have,” runs the caption. Thing is, a recent Camelot survey showed that this is more than a banal bit of satire on the newly moneyed: lottery winners were found to have suffered a range of problems, from bad wi-fi in their mansions to requiring a skip to deal with all the leaves littering their grounds. Other hardships include the awkwardness of chaps in pinstripe trousered addressing you as “sir” and “madam”, and sports cars containing far less boot space than that old secondhand hatchback you dumped.
They say that if you get rich, you just find something else to worry about; in the case of the British, it’s clearly a sense of stiff upper-lipped duty to buy into the signifiers of wealth, unrewarding as they are. Sensibly, many lottery winners give their money away to charities or friends, achieving a happiness harder to find in a cumbersome gold-plated Bentley. Ad makers, however, assume we’re too bling-fixated to entertain such solutions.
