The notion that vast windfalls inevitably bring misery is based on a handful of sad cases

Does winning the lottery wreck your life? When an anonymous Briton won £177m in the EuroMillions draw last month – making them the third biggest national lottery winner ever – the Mail Online announced it with all the impartiality of a bad fairy at a christening: “Other big winners”, the second half of the headline ran, “have faced ‘lottery curse’ with divorce, disease, family splits and death”.

Follow the progress of lottery winners through the newspapers, and you’d be forgiven for thinking they all live out the same morality tale. Headlines such as “The bad luck of winning” and “A treasury of terribly sad stories of Lotto winners” drive home the point.