Matt Pitcher

In November 1994, the then UK Prime Minister, John Major, bought the very first ticket to launch the national lottery.

A company called Camelot won the contract to run that service, and they did so for 30 years, in fact, until just last year.

In that time, Camelot brought millionaire riches to over 7,000 people.

You will have seen some of these people, I'm sure, on TV smiling and popping champagne.

You may have read about a similar number of them in the tabloids making mistakes and going bankrupt.

Behind the scenes, what you probably don't know is that Camelot made every effort to support their winners for their entire lifetime.

They understood the real impacts that a lottery win can have on an individual.

To their great credit, they stuck with their winners and supported them whatever happened to them.

Every winner was given a named support person from Camelot, someone who would celebrate with them, who would be there to offer a shoulder to cry on when things went wrong.

The person who actually physically brought the bottle of champagne and the check to the home.

And in what must have been somewhat of a come down for them, a fortnight after the win would organize a meeting with an external money advisor.

I had the extraordinary privilege for over a decade to be one of those money advisors.

I saw people transported to millionaire riches in an instant.

And I think that everyone here today can learn something from the winners that I met.

It may seem like quite a cruel way to view it, but the lottery is in many ways like a laboratory experiment in how we as humans react to the acquisition of sudden wealth.

If you sell a business for a million pounds or you inherit a million pounds, you know to an extent what to expect.

You will have seen the money coming probably years in advance, and you will have had time to plan for and adapt to how that money is going to impact on your life.

By definition, a lottery winner knows nothing until the moment their numbers are drawn.

They're catapulted from whatever their situation is into being millionaires in an instant.

2 thirds of adults in the UK play the lottery at least once a year.