DO YOU ever dream of riches beyond your wildest, well, dreams? What would you do if you won the big one?

I'm not talking about the piddling few hundred thousand salary and couple of million pay-off a fat-cat boss gets for destroying a company in record time and sacking all its workers. No, I mean fabulous, stinking, obscene wealth.

Of course you'd pay off the mortgage for all your kids or set them up a trust fund, buy mum and dad a nice, new bungalow, and maybe give a bit to the cats' home.

What then? Would you park your new, topless Porsche in the boss's parking spot and then tell him what you really thought of him instead of having to spend your life crawling up his backside?

Would you plot Monte Cristo-type revenge on the kid who bullied you in the third form; or even buy his and hers matching toothbrushes?

It's a dream with which I've wiled away many a long, boring journey. It gets me through my ironing on a Sunday morning. And I reckon the dream is better than the reality.

Because money, they say, can't buy you happiness. No, but it can give a fur lining to your misery. And it's not as important as your health. No, but it can buy you better, faster treatment.

If money is the root of all evil, I'd like to be bad. Surely, it's poverty that is the root of all evil, otherwise people would not spend their lives stamping on others to get out of it.

I like to keep my lottery tickets for months. All the time I have not checked them I am a millionaire. I'm only poor again when I scour the ticket to find not a single, miserable ball has rolled my way.

Unlike tight-fisted Yorkshireman Fred. He went to church and prayed his hardest to God: "God, why don't you ever let me win the lottery? I'm a good Christian, I come to church every week and I've never harmed a soul. Just once, let me win the lottery."

A booming voice came down from the rafters: "Fred, meet me half way. Buy a ticket for once."

The big question is, would you accept the publicity, pose for those photographs and let the world know you are going to spend, spend, spend?

What about the begging letters? Keep sending them, of course. Think of the new friends you'd find! Think of the new family as some woman you've never met crawls out of the closet and claims you are the father of her 20 children.

Think of the newspaper stories as your ex-wives tell their stories of how you kept them in poverty and now you won't even buy them a new house.

Think of the kidnap threat to the kids. Ah, there are plenty more where they came from.

But if you do keep it a secret, how do you explain the new Porsche, and house, and clothes, and holidays, and that big smile as you patiently serve out your notice so it does not look suspicious.

Especially when you work in a newspaper office and your colleagues are frantically trying to track down the £20 million lottery winner said to be "somewhere in North Yorkshire".

Would you deposit the cash in a bank in a city where you are not known, and line up the manager and his staff and make them swear an oath to keep your secret on pain of shifting your hoard to another branch?

Do you invest it and risk losing the lot, or settle it into a snug little savings account at 0.001 per cent interest?

How do you keep track of how much it is earning? Do you wait a few years and help out the family from your interest rather than cut into the precious capital?

Problems, problems already, and I've not even picked up the cheque yet. Is it worth it?

What would I do if I won the big one? Well, I'd pay someone to do my ironing, so I'd never again have to wake up in the night fretting about whether I pressed both sleeves on that shirt.

I'd have the frayed cuffs repaired on my best jacket and replace my worn out socks and knickers.

Then I'd draw it all out of the bank, take it home and count it, over and over again... and roll in it... and sniff it... and worship it. I'm rich, I'm rich, don't bother me, I'm busy. Leave me alone.

Updated: 09:40 Tuesday, September 16, 2003