All that glitters is not gold

Bakery worker Keith Gough and his wife, legal secretary, Louise thought all their problems were gone when they scooped a £9 million Lotto jackpot in June 2005. Little did they know that five years later, their dreams would turn into a nightmare.

The couple splashed out on a top-of-the-range £60,000 BMW, racehorses and a VIP box worth £350,000 at Keith’s beloved Aston Villa Football Club. They swapped their modest £160,000 semi in Bridgnorth, Shrops, for a plush £500,000 detached house in nearby Westgate.

But Keith began drinking heavily from boredom after quitting his job at a bakery (colleagues’ jealousy forced him out, he said) and after a long spell of heavy drinking his 25-year marriage finally broke down. After the split, Keith’s boozing and spending spiralled out of control. He moved to a £1million home in Cheshire, where he hired a £25,000-a-year chauffeur and £15,000-a-year gardener. He gambled away tens of thousands of pounds and splashed out on flash cars and boozy parties. By the time his divorce from Louise was finalised, Keith had wasted a large chunk of his fortune and walked away with £1.5 million. Louise still had several millions.

Booze in the end led Keith to Birmingham’s Priory rehab clinic. And this is where he was targeted by a scam artist James Prince, a bankrupt who deliberately targeted him for his money. He conned Keith out of his last £700,000 by befriending him with booze and persuading him to sign over huge amounts of cash for various “business ventures”.

“My life was brilliant,” said Keith once. “I was very much in love with Louise. And I had plenty of time for my passion, fly fishing. But the lottery has ruined everything. What’s the point of having money when it sends you to bed crying?” “Without routine in my life I started to spend, spend, spend. In the end I was just bored.”

Keith has died aged 58 from a heart attack at Telford’s Princess Royal Hospital on April 2nd, his funeral took place yesterday. Prince was jailed for three years and four months following the con. A source close to the couple said: “It’s all very sad. You would think £9million would sort out any problems but they are living proof that money cannot buy you happiness”.“They had 25 good years as an ordinary couple with no real money and have lasted less than two since they became millionaires. Everyone’s upset about it.”

And there you have it, ladies and gentlemen, a truly sad story of a lottery winner. Just goes to show, that not all that glitters is gold. Let’s hope we never see such stories in the future.