Adrian and Gillian Bayford lived a relatively pain-free life in the English countryside town of Suffolk, until the day they won just over two billion rand. Now their lives are a mess.

After scooping what was the second biggest lottery jackpot of all time, the couple moved into a R60 million Georgian mansion. But just 15 months after they had moved in, Adrian had moved out. The couple blame the added marital stress on their increased budget, but that may well be a cover-up.

You see, Mr Bayford, 43, is now being sued by his landscaper Chris Tovey, who claims that Bayford deliberately drove over him with a golf buggy, while he was tending to the couple’s 200-acre grounds. Rumours claim that this was done deliberately, after Adrian had found out that his wife had an affair with Tovey. Bayford, obviously, denies this. “There’s never been anything like that at all,” he said.

Instead, he claims that the pressure of managing their vast fortune had meant they weren’t spending as much time together as they might have liked to.

When you win the lottery it’s so stressful. I’ve worked so hard on those grounds. I’ve not had a break, we’ve never had time together as a couple. I mean you cannot change what’s happened. It is just something that happened. But we’re great friends, we’re still getting on.

As far as the rumoured golf-buggy incident goes, friends of the couple claim that it was nothing more than an  innocent mistake.

Adrian was driving an off-road vehicle on his private land when the accident occurred in April this year. There were two witnesses who  have given testimonies that it was an accident. Chris was injured but he did not suffer a broken leg.

According to the same  friends, Mr Bayford had never actually learned to drive. He had found it hard to enjoy the couple’s new fleet of cars. Indeed, he even found the golf-buggy quite a challenge – so much so that he drove it over his gardener when he was navigating his land.

Some people just can’t handle money.

(But if you think you can, the US Megamillions Lottery is currently sitting at R1.8 billion. The draw ends today, click here to give it a bash.)

[Source : Daily Mail]