No matter how many times I queue at the cigarette kiosk, hand over my £2.50 and crack the ‘I’ll have a winning lottery ticket please!’ joke, my balls never roll in. In hope and desperation, I dream of landing the big one and retiring to a country manor in Harpenden surrounded by sheep, a quad bike and a state-of-the-art Bose sound system.

Despite my inane gripes, life ain't too bad. I attempted to educate my daughter as to how lucky we really are by sitting her down and watching the fantastic film Lion last night. Despite struggling with the subtitles, I am unsure if the penny dropped as, whilst young slum-dwelling Saroo was starving outside a restaurant, hair matted and drained of all energy, she asked: "Why doesn’t he just go in and buy dinner?"

Some are born unlucky. Adolphe Sax, a Belgian, fell out of a three-storey building and into a river and nearly came a cropper both times. In addition, he survived poisoning, suffocation, being burnt badly twice and peculiarly, swallowing a pin. Adolphe was quite clearly jinxed or universally disliked, but during his self-examination as to why he was destined for a nasty death he took time out and invented the saxophone. No Adolphe equals no Curtis Stigers, which is not a good thing in anyone’s language.

Joan Ginther is arguably the luckiest person on earth having won the lottery an astonishing four times. It is apparently a one in eighteen septillion chance and no, I had never heard of a septillion either. Less impressive is the fact that Joan is a statistician, who worked out an algorithm on which she based her good fortune.

The most astonishing story of luck orbad luck must be that of Tsutomu Yama Guchi. In Hiroshima in 1945, and yes, you know what is coming next, he got hit but managed to escape to Nagasaki. Again, he survived, as did his wife and child, who were out of the house buying Tsutomu burn ointment for injuries sustained during the first blast.

I often bemoan my luck but really it pales into comparison when compared with others. Charlotte Taylor had a serious Frank Spencer moment in 2009 when she got her head stuck down the toilet at the Leeds music festival. After dropping her bag down the latrine, she ‘lunged’ to grab it and ended up to her neck in it. Amusingly, Charlotte worked at Specsavers at the time. After being freed by firefighters and having public mockery heaped upon her by fellow festival goers, her humiliation was complete as she was ‘hosed down’ by friends attempting to point the water on the affected areas through tears of mirth.

The unluckiest person of all must be Ann Hodges. On November 30, 1954, whilst taking a nap on her sofa, she got hit by a meteorite. She remains the only person ever to suffer such a fate. ‘Luckily’ she was hit on the hip and recovered. It was made all the worse as the US Air force then came and commandeered the meteorite despite Hodges being offered north of $5,000 ($45,000 today) for the rock. Eventually she received it back and, tired of the press coverage, donated it to the Alabama Museum of Natural History.

Personally, I have on occasion got my hand wedged between my head and bike helmet, aquaplaned in full view of a load of pleasure boaters whilst wearing flip flops across a watery puddle, and split my trousers as I sat spread eagled in a semi-formal work meeting. I am one of the lucky ones. That said, I will be purposely avoiding festivals this summer and thank the powers that be that my luck, like Charlotte Taylor’s head, is in.

- Brett Ellis is a teacher who lives in London Colney