A LOTTO winner who was left with just £7 in his bank account after splurging his jackpot has revealed his plans to become a rockstar.
Roger Griffiths scooped £1.8million back in 2005 with his then-wife Lara – but in 2013 he revealed he had blown the lot.
Roger Griffiths won the lottery in 2005 with his then-wife Lara
Eight years later he was left with just £7Ross Parry
Not known, clear with picture deskHe has now relaunched his university band[/caption]
Facebook – FMBIt is his third attempt at a career in music[/caption]
He used £25,000 of the whopping sum pursuing stardom with his old uni band FMB – but the single flopped with just 600 copies sold.
The band had previously appeared on Channel4 reality show The Next Big Thing in the nineties, but failed to make a breakthrough in the industry.
And now former Roger – who once insisted he was “born to be a rocker” – is in his fifties and attempting another music comeback.
The dad-of-two is hoping it will be third time lucky for FMB after the five-man band released singles in March and June.
The group recently reformed after a 26-year hiatus and now describes itself online as “The best famous band no-one knows about”.
In a recent local radio interview, lead singer Roger revealed hopes of gigs, future albums and even a book about FMB in future, gushing: “We’re incredibly excited”.
He and pals Ragnar O’Connor and Jeffers Mayo formed FMB in 1990 while studying at University of Lancaster. Drummer Alex Lutes and bassist Milo O’Connor joined later.
The band were tipped for the top when they appeared on C4 docusoap the Next Big Thing in 1992, which followed their – ultimately unsuccessful – attempts to make it big.
They split up after the eight-part show was screened but had got back in touch just before Roger and Lara won the money.
Speaking of his hopes for the band after the lotto win, Roger said: “We tried our hardest the first time round but the music industry wasn’t ready for us.
“We were just before our time.
“But now I’m a millionaire we’re going to produce this great single we had at the time and it’s going to be massive.”
He spent tens of thousands on recording and promoting the video, saying at the time: “I love being in a band and that’s just what I want to do. I was born to be a rocker.”
But the song flopped and the band, his finances and his marriage hit the skids.
Roger revealed in 2013 that the money was gone – and Lara publicly blamed him for their split.
The pair were touted as a cautionary tale for money being unable to buy happiness.
But FMB reformed between covid lockdowns in 2020 and recorded a 15-track “Greatest Hits” album.
It is being flogged for £5 on streaming platform Bandcamp and a second album is in the works.
The video for their latest single, released last month and available for £1, is said to depict a “Montage of young men with one dream in their hearts , and a realisation it can be a cruel world.”
Roger is likely hoping for the success of Take That – having met Howard Donald and Mark Owen at the posh Sanderson Hotel in his lotto heyday – who won a new legion of fans after reuniting in the 2000s following a decade-long break.
Speaking about the decision to relaunch his band in a recent interview on Phoenix FM, he neglected to mention his previous lotto success.
He told host Paul Golder: “Now is the time of DIY, everybody’s doing it, everything we need is at our fingertips. […] We took our time, it was the best part of 18 months putting this together and what we haven’t lost is that sound we have created […] we’re incredibly proud of it.”
He added that the band is “desperately keen” to start gigging again: “What we’d like to be able to do is get on a bill with another nineties act, someone that’s performing that we could sit alongside and then the crowd will understand where our roots are and where we came from.”
A book is even in the works, he admitted, adding: “We’ve written a couple of pages of it and it is very entertaining”.