Focus: Yob wins £10m (Daily Telegraph, Tue 5th Nov)

You can almost hear the headline writer spluttering his disgust. What right has a young reprobate like Michael Carroll to a lottery fortune? Simon O'Hagan went to his home town to find out

The village of Wiggenhall St Mary Magdalen is about as far off the beaten track as you can get. Surrounded by vast expanses of Norfolk fenland, Magdalen – as the locals know it – straddles the Great Ouse river, and comprises a sprawling collection of ugly new houses and attractive period ones, a church, a pub, a post office and a chip shop.

Magdalen must be fine if you are an older person seeking the quiet life, and like big skies and open landscapes. For a kid growing up there, it's slightly different. The place would probably drive you mad with boredom. And for a poor kid from a broken home who has suffered the loss of a parent, got little out of school and has few career prospects, the problem is worse still.

That is exactly the sort of young man Michael Carroll used to be: a 19-year-old who was in and out of work, had been reduced to sleeping rough, fallen into petty crime and vandalism, and generally lost his way before his journey into adulthood had even started. Then, just over a week ago, his world changed. He bought a Lottery ticket and won £9.7m.

Widespread outrage and indignation greeted Mr Carroll's good fortune. To many people he was a just a typical lager lout, a symbol of the blight of rural crime, a scourge on the face of ancient, peaceful, civilised ways. To complete the picture of all-round dysfunctionality, he even had a pregnant girlfriend.

There was, however, another way of looking at this morality tale apparently turned upside down: at the very least Mr Carroll held out the prospect of a fascinating case study. Now that the excuse of economic deprivation had gone, would the miscreant in him be removed for ever? Could civic responsibility be bought? Would Mr Carroll's background as a tag-wearing tearaway make it harder for him to cope with the sudden acquisition of vast wealth? Might the money mean that his old difficulties were merely replaced by worse ones? The history of the Lottery and the football pools is littered with tales of people who were apparently much more stable than he is but who found their lives ruined as a result of big wins.

Only time will tell. What can be said for now is that Mr Carroll's fecklessness was only ever partly about money. It was as much about the emotional disturbance he had suffered – and the signs are that before he landed his millions he was already being rescued from the kind of predicament that is all too familiar to the nation's social workers.

After the Lottery win, the focus was very much on Mr Carroll's wrongdoing – the theft, speeding, driving without insurance, and criminal damage – and the four months he had spent in prison. Victims of his yobbery in and around Magdalen were quoted as saying they wanted compensation. Others said he should be obliged, as an act of contrition, to give large sums to charity. (So far he has said he wants to buy a house with a lake where he can indulge his passion for fishing). There were those in the pub who said convicted criminals shouldn't be allowed to do the Lottery in the first place. How could law-abiding citizens pay their pound every week, and "toe-rags" like Mr Carroll scoop the jackpot?

But morality and the Lottery never did have much to do with each other, and the message from most villagers last week was one of "Good luck to him". For those who knew Mr Carroll, the feeling was much less one of resentment than sympathy.

Mr Carroll has certainly had his share of troubles. The youngest of three children, he went through the trauma of his parents' marriage break-up before his father died of a heart attack when Michael was only 10. Home life with his mother Kim was not easy. He struggled at Downham Market High School, and before long he fell into bad company. But according to Rob Etherton, who runs Magdalen post office and knows Mr Carroll well, that's different from being bad himself. "You can't take away what he's done," Mr Etherton said, "but he's paid for his misdemeanours. Michael's basically a good lad. We've always had a laugh and a joke. He's just not had the best of starts in life." Mr Etherton had worked in a centre for excluded schoolchildren. Mr Carroll was "a pussycat" compared with some of them.

Work, said Mr Etherton, was what kept Mr Carroll on the straight and narrow, and over the years he had been employed in a chocolate factory in Fakenham, in another factory nearby and as a relief dustman. He'll never have to go near a job again, but a burden may still fall on the shoulders of Stephen and Kelly Muncaster, the uncle and aunt who took Michael into their Magdalen home a few months ago, after he had left his mother's and ended up in jail. With three children of their own, it was a challenge to take on responsibility for a lad whose tagging order required him to remain indoors between 6pm and 6am. But by all accounts, Mr Carroll was turning the corner.

Margaret Parry is an old friend of Mr Carroll's grandmother. She talked about the time she had been on holiday with the Carroll family and other friends, and how Michael, then aged 12 or 13, had given up being with his mates in order to teach one of the younger ones how to swim. She said he had helped her sell balloons to raise money for the children's charity she is involved with. "He's no angel, but then what teenager is?" Mrs Parry said that one of the first things Mr Carroll said he wanted to spend his money on was a headstone for his father's grave.

After Mr Carroll had celebrated his win in time-honoured, champagne-popping fashion, the tagging order, which is due to run out next month, was lifted for a few days to free him from the attentions of the press. He will have to add the time on to his sentence. Meanwhile Kelly Muncaster was saying nothing herself, other than that she "thought the world of Michael and the press had got him all wrong". Maybe. But will having all that money help him prove it?