THE gall of some people really is breathtaking. Back in 2013, aged just 17, Edinburgh Euromillions winner Jane Park smiled out of our newspapers carrying designer shopping bags and waving a cheque for £1m. I remember smiling at the sight of someone so young winning all that cash and wishing her the best of luck. She seemed like a bubbly lass, the sort who would thoroughly enjoy the youthful trappings of having a few quid. And why shouldn’t she? That’s the random nature of winning the lottery, and that’s why folk play. She might not use the money to study at Harvard, but I could imagine her opening a string of nail bars.

Park would never experience the sort of woes her millennial contemporaries would have to contend with. She wouldn’t be straddled with tens of thousands of pounds in student loans, she wouldn’t have to survive on the minimum wage and a zero hours contract or share a flat till she was 35. For her, life would start young, lucky and full of promise.

Which makes her decision to sue Euromillions, as reported at the weekend, all the more extraordinary – and infuriating. Ms Park, now 21, says the firm should never have allowed her to win such a large sum of money at 17, that being a young millionaire only brings misery. Is it the extra psychological burden of not being able to solve all the world’s ills that has made her so unhappy, I hear you ask? No, it’s the fact that shopping is no fun when you’re rich because you can afford whatever you like, and neither is going on holiday to places like the Maldives because older people look down on you for getting “hammered”, apparently. Then there’s those rotten plastic surgeons who refuse to do more work on you (she got breast implants at 18) because you’re only 21. I can only assume your heart is bleeding for Ms Park by now, dear reader.

What makes me most angry about this story is the lack of imagination and wasted opportunity. Don’t get me wrong, few people are at their wisest as teenagers; but most of us have hopes and dreams, for ourselves and others, that money really can help to realise.

Ms Park makes the cliched complaint of the rich and idle that her life has no purpose. It seems to me she hasn’t tried very hard to give herself any.

If she didn’t want to use the money to educate herself she could have set up a business, managed initially by someone else, that could and should have given her a lifetime of purpose. It could also, of course, have created jobs for others.

If she didn’t fancy the business world, Ms Park could have established a charitable trust to make the best use of her money.

Fellow Scots Euromillions winners Chris and Colin Weir – who scooped £161m in 2011 – did just that and have since seen their money benefit hundreds of individuals, charities and good causes in Scotland and across the UK.

If she honestly felt that being a millionaire was making her unhappy, Ms Park could have simply written a cheque to Cancer Research or Cats Protection – I’m sure either would have been delighted to receive her donation.

Instead, Ms Park, who says she is trolled on social media, has now made herself even more of a target by giving the sort of interview that would make Donald Trump look self-aware, especially as she lives in the less-than-salubrious district of Niddrie, where I can only imagine there is no shortage of needy people.

We all know money doesn’t bring you happiness, and Ms Park is finding this out right now. What it does do, however, is give you choices and opportunities. Ms Park’s choice not to exploit such opportunities is both a bad and a rather sad one. I only hope she acquires some wisdom before all her money is gone.

Or that she at least has the sense to leave it in a plastic bag at the local foodbank.