Ever since winning £1,000,000 on the Euromillions back in 2012, 26-year-old Edinburgh girl Jane Park has been a Sick Chirpse legend. I mean who could forget the time she got herself a £50,000 makeover, got smashed on ‘snus’ and started selling £50 boob pics for charity? The girl’s an absolute legend.
It hasn’t all been fun and games though, with Jane describing her experience over the years as a ‘twisted fairytale’ that has seen her receive threats of violence and find herself in the middle of blackmail plots.
As such, Jane reckons the government’s recent shift in the age limit to 18 isn’t quite enough. She says the lottery should bear a warning similar to those that appear on alcohol and tobacco products:
“The lottery should come with a health warning similar to smoking and drinking.
I understand they can’t make winning sound awful, but they have a responsibility to not mislead the public.”
Jane also suggests that lotto adverts should only be aired late at night, and should carry a warning for when someone wins:
“The adverts should be aired later in the evening and advertising should be out of the way from children.
It sounds silly, but children dream of either being famous or winning the lottery, and if it wasn’t so glamorised maybe there would be more ambition rather than gambling.
People always refer to the lottery as ‘playing the lottery’, but it’s not ‘playing’. It’s just plain gambling, apart from picking some number there is no game element to it.
How it wasn’t held to the same legislation as gambling from the beginning baffles me.”
On the countless unsolicited messages she’s received since winning the lotto:
“It may be parents with terminally ill children or needing life-changing surgery. Uni students want me to pay for their education.
I also get a lot of marriage proposals. I’d say I get at least one a week.
It’s not from anyone interested in me, it’s from people interested in the money.”
Despite coming up to a decade since winning the cash, Jane has made that money stretch:
“I’m proud that I have invested my money wisely and nine years later I’m still living a good life. It just feels like people are waiting for the day I become broke and homeless, but I won’t let that happen.”
Welp, I guess that’s why it’s best to stay anonymous when you win huge sums of money on the Lotto. It’s true that Camelot explain the risks to you and also provide extensive support and advice to their winners, but at the same time it probably benefits them more for their winners to go public so that winning the lottery seems a more realistic prospect for everyone else.
Still, Jane was 17 when she won so it’s only natural she’d want to go public and lap up the attention, which she then came to find has its drawbacks. Then again, she’s still giving interviews on the morning shows and on Ladbible and such so maybe she doesn’t hate being a famous Lotto winner that much.
For the time Jane got brutal revenge on her ex-boyfriend by sharing a Snapchat of herself in bed with another man, click HERE. Ruthless stuff.
