Charlie Courtauld: Is this the world's least imaginative man? I'll bet you £200m that he is

It won't change his life, he insists. He'll still be up at 5am every day, will drive to work and put in a full day at the office. Perhaps he'll invest in that chopper he's always fancied, maybe some tithes to his church, but otherwise Jack Whittaker claims that he'll remain unfazed: "If I can help it, my life won't change. I'm content with my life." This from the man who had just scooped £200m on the United States lottery. The stetson-wearing 55-year-old took the world's biggest lottery win in his stride: "I just want to thank God for letting me pick the right numbers."

All very admirable. But I must confess that I found Mr Whittaker's reaction a tad disappointing. "The store clerk said I couldn't have won because I wasn't excited enough." I agree with the clerk. Come on, Jack. Two hundred million quid? Even though more than half will go in taxes, it's a lot of money. Widen your horizons. No mention of setting up a huge charity fund? No mention of giving his fortune away for medical research? Of course, I'm a bit parti pris on this score ­ but couldn't he have pushed a couple of mill at the MS Society, for example? If Mr Whittaker is so content with his lot (and good for him that he is), then why not make grandiose plans for The Jack Whittaker Philanthropic Fund? Why ­ let's face it ­ did he do the lottery at all?

Apparently Jack spent £66 buying a hundred tickets for this draw. When the balls were drawn, he presumably had to sort through them all to check whether he'd won. Now, I'm not in Jack's league, but I did join the few remaining mugs who put a fiver on the Christmas draw for our National Lottery, which held out the prospect of creating a handful of millionaires. I wasn't expecting a Jack-style windfall. A couple of million would have done me fine. But, as usual, not one of my numbers was selected.

But I won't claim that the money wouldn't have changed my life. I'd already made mental plans for setting up the Charlie and Lucy Bonanza Giveaway Fund ­ with which my wife and I could send anonymous wads to deserving folk, names garnered from the tabloid "news in brief" sections. The "89-year-old have-a-go hero" would surely benefit from £1,000 through the post. After all, I reasoned, there's no point just sitting on a wad like Jack seems intent on, is there? Money, as the Beatles pointed out, can't buy love. (Although it can help a bit.)

As if to prove the point, the wealthiest woman in the world popped up on our television screens on Christmas Day to bemoan her family's fate over the past twelvemonth. The Queen's Christmas Broadcast dispensed Her Maj's annual message of gloom to the nation. As if Brussels sprouts and plum pudding hadn't already spoiled many people's day. But we could hardly have expected more from Liz: it was never going to be a barnstormer of festive joy.

Despite this being her Golden Jubilee year, this was a woman who lost both her mother and her sister in 2002, and whose last-minute intervention in a court case ­ to universal scorn ­ prevented a couple of royal butlers waiting for Santa to fill their mailbags rather than their stockings. Moreover, the subsequent revelations about royal life suggested ­ as if we didn't already know ­ that there are some pretty undeserving rich around Buck House.

And so, despite the trails and attempts to talk up the figures, the Queen's broadcast garnered pretty paltry numbers. When you are networked across both ITV and BBC on a bank holiday 9.3 million viewers is nothing to write home about.

The slide in viewers for the broadcast will continue and at some point, someone ­ probably ITV (whose need is the more desperate) ­ will shunt the Queen to a safer spot. Perhaps 10am ­ thus making way for more viewer-friendly programming, like Jack Whittaker Writes A Huge Cheque to Charlie Courtauld? Now there's a programme I'd like to see.