One of the UK's most infamous lottery winners scooped a £10 million jackpot which he managed to burn through in about eight years, after which he applied for his old job as a binman.
Winning the lottery might be the dream for many, but the reality for those whose numbers come up have made it sound more like a nightmare.
When binman Michael Carroll bought a £1 lottery ticket in November 2002 it was his first time playing, and wouldn't you know it his numbers turned out to be winners.
Advert
Winning the lottery on the first go is pretty much the dream and the then 19-year-old pocketed a fortune that ought to last a lifetime if looked after properly.
Unfortunately, the bloke blew through all of his lottery winnings in just about eight years.
Denounced as a 'Lotto lout' by the tabloids, Carroll started off by giving a million quid each to his mum, aunt and sister.
He then stuck another million into the Scottish football club Rangers, and set up £3.9 million of the money into an investment bond.
Advert
Making some big-money purchases including a £325,000 mansion (house prices have really increased in the past 23 years) and £150,000 worth of gold, he also bought a new Range Rover, two BMW M3s, a BMW Z4 and three Mitsubishi Evos.
Apparently the Z4 was 's**t'.
Carroll also said that he was spending a couple of thousand quid a day on cocaine, admitting he 'started sniffing the world away' and he also became a 'full-blown alcoholic' who would start his day with 'three lines of Charlie and half a bottle of vodka'.
Even more money would be spent on 'Roman-style orgies' where naked women would walk around with trays of cocaine.
Advert
"In every room in my house people would be f**king. Women would just come up to me and offer me sex. The girls would have all their gear off and they'd be serving cocaine on silver plates," he said of his hedonistic lifestyle that was costing him up to £50,000 a night.
It wasn't all fun and games though, as he said that one day he'd woken up to find that five of his dogs had been killed and his family threatened with blackmail, while another time he said men with shotguns showed up at his house.
By 2010 the lottery money was pretty much all gone and he reapplied for his old job as a binman.
According to the Mirror, he later got a job delivering coal for a living and said that he wouldn't change a thing about his experience as it was 'the best 10 years of my life for a pound'.
"I don't look back with any regrets, that's for sure, I wouldn't want to turn the clock back," he said.
Advert
Fair enough.
Topics: UK News, Money, National Lottery
Joe Harker