What a lucky fellow I am.

So far this week I have won £202,000 on the 'UK International Lotto' and Euros 5.2 million on De Lotto in the Netherlands according to my e-mail 'in box'.

The notification e-mail from 'UK International Lotto' was quite cute, because they had stolen elements of the UK lottery operator Camelot's corporate logo and used British-sounding names for the contact officials for once, instead of 'Mr Abu Musa' with a dodgy bank account in Lagos etc.

Unfortunately they'd forgotten that in the UK we spell things differently from North American English. For example, they wrote 'endeavor' whereas we would say 'endeavour' and they wrote 'potato' whereas we would say 'spud' etc.

I'm thinking of running a 'Scam e-mail of the Week' spot featuring the more ridiculous examples.
I have had so much correspondence from people claiming to be lawyers acting for Brits who died in car crashes/plane crashes/boat accidents in exotic locations (usually in west Africa) that I'm not surprised the coastline there used to be known as 'The White Man's Grave'.

The common thread with these solicitous solicitors is that all I have to do is pass them details of my bank account and they will kindly agree to deposit the entire balance of the dead person's estate with me.

Naturally, being a polite and friendly fellow, I always comply. With so much money coming in, I was a little surprised when checking my balance recently, to find I was in fact £4.2 million overdrawn.

How could this have happened?