£157 million. That's the ridiculous prize fund on offer in the latest Euromillions draw after weeks of roll-overs and discarded tickets making newsagents' pavements look like the scores on bus floors. Just think about it...life as a multi-millionaire biker would be terrible.
Terrible? Well, far from ideal at least. Imagine being able to buy any bike in the world with a casual flash of cash, yet feeling no pride-and-joy connection to a throwaway possession. Indecision would lead to overindulgence, and the dream garage of bikes you told yourself you deserved quickly becomes a burgeoning collection so vast that the Goodwood Festival of Speed gets jealous. Ewan McGregor's round the world BMW GS? Valentino Rossi's Yamaha M1? Steve McQueen's flying Triumph? In fact, if money is no object then why not dig up Steve himself – anything can be done with a budget that big.
But to have so many bikes – one of every 2013 model in every colour please - varying from cutting edge to historically important, would make it impossible to ride each of them as regularly as their magnificence justifies, if at all. You would soon open a museum and let the public drool over what should have been your personal toys, which instead have been subjected to a life of parade laps and posing on podiums. That's like buying a collection of Thai brides and donating their bodies to medical science while they're still alive. Stupid really.
Tuesday rolls around. Lo and behold I still buy my ticket...and bugger me, I've won!!!...a little more than a tenner. But that suits me – less than half a tank of fuel at today's prices, for the decade-old bike I begrudgingly borrow from my father for lack of a better option.
Yes, £157 million would be a terrible thing.
