How a EuroMillions winner blew £40m of his lotto fortune in the eight years before his death. Colin Weir and his wife Christine won the £161million EuroMillions jackpot in 2011
Many of us dream of winning the lottery and come up with extravagant plans for what we’d splash the cash on if we did.
And now documents have revealed how winner burned through his fortune at a rate of almost £100,000 a week.
Colin Weir and his former wife Christine won £161million in a EuroMillions jackpot back in 2011, making him Scotland’s biggest ever lottery winner.
But by the time he died, aged 71, last December, his portion of the prize had plummeted by £40million, the Daily Record reports.
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In just eight years, the former STV cameraman spent a fortune on his family and friends, charitable giving, property, cars, horses, Jewelry, and artworks.
At the time of his death he owned a £1.1m five-bedroom home on the seafront in Ayr, a vintage Bentley Arnage, a Jaguar F-Pace SUV, and two Mercedes – an E Class estate and V Class people carrier.
Weeks before he died, he bought a 55 per cent stake in his football team, Partick Thistle – before donating it to fans.
Friends and charitable trusts also benefited from Colin’s kindness, and he passed on money to his two adult children. He left the £3.5m mansion he had shared with his wife and co-winner, Christine, when their marriage ended in 2018.
On hitting the jackpot, lottery winners are offered a meeting with lawyers and financial advisors as they consider how to manage their fortune.
Last year Ruth Breen, who scooped £1m with a EuroMillions Millionaire Raffle ticket, told us about the process.
Meanwhile, earlier this month, the the National Lottery’s senior winners advisor, Andy Carter, who has met 2,000 winners over the years, told the M.E.N. how he was struck by the generosity of ordinary people when they suddenly come into money.
He describes himself as a ‘midwife’ to the newly rich, and advises them to take a gradual approach to their new reality.
“The best advice really, and it sounds really boring and cliché, is to take your time,” he told the M.E.N. “I think the other thing is treat yourself to something that in the size of the win is quite small but it’s just something you wouldn’t have done previously,” he went on, speaking of the advice he gives to winners.
“That helps make it real. So, if you have been walking past a shop and you’ve seen a pair of shoes for hundreds of pounds and you’d never justify paying that much, go and buy that. It won’t make a mark in you £1m pound win but you wouldn’t have been able to do it previously.”
“If you are gifting, people are hung up on figures,” Andy added.
“They say I am going to give ‘Auntie So and So’ this amount. But I would say talk to those people first and find out what they would want and what would be useful.
“There’s no rush to give them a big lump straight away.
“If you were my sister and I win £10m and I give you £2m, I am making you a lottery winner.
“And all the sort of excitement and nerves I would have had, you’d end up having at the same time.”
“It makes you realize people, the British population, are pretty good,” he said of his job. “They are generous, they are sensible with what they do, they are likeable’
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