Thanks a lotto

MINDREADING, part one. When you read the papers this week and saw Gary Henry with a cheque for nearly £5m, you asked yourself: “If I won the Lottery, would I go public?” Mindreading, part two. You answered no.

But, even if you want privacy, it’s not easy.

Think how hard keeping one secret is: your husband’s birthday present, perhaps, or your daughter’s headlice. Now think how hard keeping five million secrets is. Will your kids tell anyone? Your cousins? What will the neighbours say when you move, or buy that flash registration plate?

Most people have a journalist inside, notebook in hand, pencil behind ear, bursting to get out: they want the news and they want to tell it. Think of your street, your club or your town.

There are some people I bet the Official Secrets Act couldn’t silence.

Keeping quiet is even harder when national newspapers offer your pals £5,000 to shop you.

Ken and Anita Wynne lived in a £35,000, threebedroom house in Darlington when they won £3.6m in 2001. After being picked up by Camelot, taken to their office in Sunderland, and subbed £1,000 cash, they had to decide: publicity or no publicity?

“At the time, The Sun was offering anyone who shopped an anonymous winner £5,000,”

says Ken. “£5,000, just for giving a name – it was wrong.”

Ken and Anita decided to save neighbours the moral dilemma and journalists the doorknocking by going public. Gossips thrive on half-truths, tit-bits and rumours. “Have you heard…?” isn’t the killer intro once everyone has, in fact, heard.

“Camelot made the arrangements and said there’d be a couple of local newspapers at the press conference, local radio and maybe one or two nationals,” says Ken. “Well, every national newspaper was there. Five radio stations, the lot. It didn’t bother me, though. I’ve done pub quizzes, I’ve done talks about the World Cup – I’m not bothered by someone thrusting a microphone in my face.”

But was he not bothered by begging letters?

Be honest: if your neighbour won £5m, you’d be half-tempted to ask for a tenner. “We were advised by Camelot – they said other previous winners had found it okay and we never had any problems from anyone,” says Ken. So life’s still grand? “I’m muddling through,” he says, laughing.

If Gary Henry, the Burger King, wanted to keep his win quiet, he wouldn’t just have a gaggle of neighbours, ear-dropping over the fence, to deal with. Coun Henry is a Liberal Democrat on Wear Valley District Council, so he had fellow councillors – friend and foe – to bear in mind. And, of course, he was elected as a commoner.

The electorate should know, he decided, their man’s elevation in status.

“I’m a councillor and I want people to know,”

he says. “People know me and I thought it was right they knew my circumstances. They would soon know anyway.”

When Freddie Craggs, of Carthorpe, North Yorkshire, won £1m from a 50p, eight-horse accumulator in February, he wanted anonymity.

Problem was, the world, his wife and his nextdoor neighbour wanted the story. His name was leaked, but he stayed hiding.

“You won’t find him – I have had a word with him,” said his brother Charles on the Sunday after his win. By Monday, Freddie held a press conference. That’s the problem with winning millions: you suddenly become much, much more interesting.

“I was not going to get all demonstrative,”

Freddie told the nation. “I was not going to go jumping about and shouting. It is just going to make life a bit more comfortable.”

Dot Renshaw is Camelot’s head of player services – when someone wins, she and her team look after them. “When I first joined in 1994, I would not have gone public – though I can’t play anyway – but I would have told family, who can play, not to go public,” she says by phone from Liverpool, after a hectic day reassuring the nouveau riche. “Within 12 months on the job, I told my family: ‘If you win, go public’.”

The problem, of course, is gossip. You can keep it quiet but, chances are, it will get leaked.

“If you have children old enough to understand mum and dad have won the Lottery they’re going to tell their school friends,” says Dot. “It goes round like wildfire. With the best will in the world, someone will tell the press, then they will have to deal with it. If they go through us, we’re there to hold their hand.

“If you’re already reasonably well-off and you’re not going to move, you might be able to hide it. But, generally, most people would find it difficult to explain where they’d got money for a new house, or new car. If they’re going to move house and it’s drastic – from a terrace to a six-bedroom detached, say – what are people going to say? They’re going to say ‘They must have won the Lottery’.”

AROUND 30 per cent of winners go public.

Why do the others keep quiet? “Some people don’t relish the idea of the press,”

says Dot. What about begging letters? We all know scroungers – think how many you’d know with £5m in the bank.

“There used to be begging letters, but it seems to have dropped off. People do get begging letters, but nothing like you’d expect. At most, there’ll be ten and very often not that.”

When winners do go public, Camelot rub their hands. After all, hands up if you’re a Wear Valley District Councillor without a ticket for Saturday’s draw? Thought so. But Dot’s domain is separate to the press office. No one is leant on, not even for a fiver.

“We would never say to anyone ‘You have to go public’,” she says. “Of course, we’re really pleased when people go public – but we don’t put pressure on.”

Most of all, Dot says, going public helps winners enjoy it. No secrets and plenty of newspaper cuttings to show the grandkids. “We want the winner to enjoy it – that’s the whole point,” says Dot. “The winners who don’t go public take longer to realise what it means to them. Those who do, walk down the street, everyone recognises them, wants to touch them for good luck. They will be a celebrity for a while, then it will die off. In my experience, all the winners enjoyed going public.”

So now, after hearing from Ken, Gary, and Dot, would you go public? Unfortunately, with odds of 1 in 13,983,816 on winning the jackpot, it’s a decision you’re not likely to have to make soon. Mind, I bet Gary Henry thought that last week.