Low life
Stick to the bookies
Jeffrey Bernard
\\T hen the result of the third week's National Lottery came through last nigh! on television I thought how desperatelY ' would like to win it and I also thought hoW strange and unnecessary it must be to have, that much money. Why I say that I woule desperately like to win it, is because I should be fascinated to see just how 111Y friends and acquaintances would behave towards me. Great wealth is a common dream an,d, was written about very well, by I can ' remember who, in this journal a short whit!, ago. The older I get, the more convinced ' am that I would utter something falrbli turgid on the lines of it not changing 01e. " am beginning to understand now how these people can say it. Ten million pounticsi would not buy me a new leg, neither weal it do much more than raise the odd eYecl brow of many of the women who I w011.,1 genuinely like to spend more time Ow. than it takes to get through a weekend 111 Paris.
I can imagine the hate that my j winning al jackpot would provoke, especially when remember the grudging congratulanons offered me when Peter O'Toole opened 1.11 Jeffrey Bernard is Unwell. Envy is a sePt caemia of the soul. But I was great' amused that the second National LotteZ should have been won by that gang 'i women who were in the care of the lo.ea authority. I should imagine that £1 01111 must give whatever bug it is that cans% Alzheimer's disease a very severe)°,,t indeed and that Tom Baker was quite rigP,, when he played Dr Who and remarked 1'.. me one day that a National Health Pre scription for £10,000 would cure any ill. ,e So many people claim that it would '1 lovely to be able to give a lot of mei away to those in need that they like ahrlit love, but I would be tempted to wreak ilk) of revenge on the sort of twits who we I say to me years ago things like, 'Yea, !,„ could help you, but you'd only spend it Tr immensely rich young man by post-vi standards, who I went to school with, said to me one day, when I was really on ruY uppers in the French House 'Would you like to come upstairs and watch me eat lunch?' The man in question is now finding times hard himself and is, oddly enough, sharing a cottage in the country with a dia- betic amputee and it serves him right. I hope his amputee is as quick-tempered as this one. I can't say I would mind verY much if I was loved for my money if it was on a grand scale, but the triviality of some- one's eyes lighting up when you walk into 3 bar because you represent one more drink to them, I find irritating to say the least. Just as it is when you are expected to buy a round having backed a winner but get verY few offers if your horse is second. Wives are particularly good or bad about this depending on how you look at it. NV daughter's mother insists to this day that I never bought her two rings which she still wears thanks to a double at Cheltenham but that she bought them herself WO money she earned darning socks or bY some other nonsensical, out of date task.11 1970, when Victor Chandler's father sent, me round a crate of Louis Roderer CrYstat Brut for Christmas and I remarked that he was a good, kind and generous man, she screamed at me in her logical female waY that I was worse than a fool and that that case of champagne had probably cost me £5,000. It is of no consolation to me any more to reflect that she is unlikely ever t° back a winner of any sort for the rest of her life because I now have got to like her .s° much. Nevertheless, her reaction to Vie; tor's Christmas gift was fairly typical ant` makes me wonder whether I wouldn't pre; fer spending nine days on a desert islaue with a bookmaker than with the delicious Miss Joanna Lumley.
Previous page
