Who wants to be a millionaire?

IF EVERYTHING goes according to plan, I will be a millionaire in no time.

In my mailbox this week arrives bad and good news.

The bad is that I have learnt of the death of my relative on the doomed Korean Air Line, flight number 801, on August 6, 1997.

This is tinctured with the good news that I am apparently the sole surviving relative of the crash victim – don’t ask me how since I still have my mother and six siblings.

This news is contained in a letter from Mr Ejner Andersen, “a staff” with the Rand Merchant Bank in South Africa who begins by apologising for “intruding” my privacy before helpfully informing me that he has “taken time out to source the right individual, which is your humble self”.

Warming up to his theme, Andersen quickly informs me that he possesses “valuable and classified information” which could finally see millions of dollars being deposited in my bank account once he ascertains my “disposition towards receiving and utilising (valuable) information from me that guarantees you being legally acknowledged as the sole surviving relative of an investor (name withheld) who died…”

Further, Andersen wants me to understand that “this is a DEAL”.

“I have all the legal and banking details of the deceased client that will facilitate putting you forward as the claimant/beneficiary of the funds and ultimately transfer of the inheritance,” he says.

Andersen adds that he is writing to me “because since am (sic) a public servant, I cannot operate a foreign account”.

In-between asking me to send him my full legal name and telephone number for “further verbal correspondence”, Andersen impresses on me to “maintain a great deal of confidentiality towards this endeavour”.

He adds: “I await your urgent response.”

It is almost a decade since the so-called Nigerian 419 scam was discovered but I, like millions of people out there, continue to be bombarded with these e-mails from ghostly benefactors from the other end of the world.

Often, the grammar is tortured, the syntax disfigured, but the message is coherent: a relative you probably have never heard of is dead. But don’t cry, because you could soon be a millionaire as they have left you all they ever owned.

Variably, some African politician has died and the e-mailer, usually a “barrister”, has been left in charge of zillions of dollars which, with your permission, you could share. All you are required to do is send a certain sum to expedite the proceedings, bribe officials or pay taxes, before you can lay your hands on the loot.

Often, real names of living or dead politicians are used. In Andersen’s case, he correctly states that a Korean Air Line crashed on that August day. It is also true that there is a bank called the Rand Merchant Bank in South Africa, from which he has “taken time out” to find “my humble self” – just in case I try to call the bank. But the facts end there, and the rest is the creation of the writer who is convinced somewhere out there he will find someone foolish (and greedy) enough to buy his story.

I hate spam, but the Nigerian letters do sometimes provide some comic relief – which as an Arsenal supporter is something I will need a lot this New Year.