The lottery of life

No, really, we want to know. Tell us all, hold nothing back. What about the Totts? Where do you stand on the question that is dividing the nation? Should Martyn and Kay, the young couple from Watford, get their £3m lottery win even though they have lost the ticket? Should they bite their upper lips bravely, blink back the tears, accept that the lottery is a lottery and bid farewell to their dreams of a nice house near Rod Stewart's in Theydon Bois?

No, really, we want to know. Tell us all, hold nothing back. What about the Totts? Where do you stand on the question that is dividing the nation? Should Martyn and Kay, the young couple from Watford, get their £3m lottery win even though they have lost the ticket? Should they bite their upper lips bravely, blink back the tears, accept that the lottery is a lottery and bid farewell to their dreams of a nice house near Rod Stewart's in Theydon Bois?

Or should Camelot be forced to stop its small-print scrooging and stump up the readies? What a wonderful trope for our times it all is, a whirligig of tantalising material ­ dreams, accident, complaint, lawyers, taped conversations, and celebrity ­ so pressing as to merit ministerial TV intervention. It deserves a Dickens, but gets Max Clifford.

Before the mental stress compensation claim, might we suggest that a way out of the impasse could be to give the Totts their own television show, or for the country to decide on 7 June. Whatever, this is probably not the moment to recall that effortlessly imperial remark of Cecil Rhodes: "Remember that you are an Englishman, and have consequently won first prize in the lottery of life."