THE MAN WHO MAKES SURE LOTTERY WINNERS CAN COPE WITH THEIR MILLIONS
WHEN Joe and Jess Thwaite realised that they had won big on the lottery, it was Andy Carter who told them that the exact amount was £184,262,899.
As senior wins adviser for Camelot, Andy has the great job of knocking on the door of lucky new millionaires to confirm the good news that their lives have changed forever. After 12 years in the job, he has met thousands of winners, but even he was blown away when the couple from Gloucester took the biggest ever sum handed out to EuroMillions players.
“Joe and Jess made it into the top one thousand of the richest people in the UK overnight,” says Andy, sounding nearly as shocked as the couple themselves.
“It is hard to get your head around that amount of money.”
Andy watched the draw on Tuesday, May 10, at home in Cardiff, but had no idea where in the UK the winners were from.
He is one of a number of advisers across the UK who meet with people who win £50,000 or more on the National Lottery, Lotto and Euromillions.
The Thwaite family knew they had won almost straightaway because they had played by choosing a lucky dip on the app, so Andy was told on the Wednesday morning that they lived in Wales and West – the area he covers.
“I called them that morning to confirm the win, and to talk them through what would happen next,” he says.
“We obviously have financial issues to work out, but a big part of our job is checking on welfare, and making sure they are OK. These are life-changing amounts, especially £184m, and we have a very big duty of care to make sure people are coping.
“There is a real emphasis on making sure you don’t just throw the money at them and run off. You have a very strong responsibility to make sure they are well looked after.”
After confirming the win over the phone, Andy went to meet Joe and Jess in person with papers for them to sign, details of experts they can speak to, and advice on going forward.
One of the areas always discussed is whether to tell everyone about the win, or to remain anonymous.
The latest winners, who broke the record for the highest amount won in a lottery game in the UK by more than £14m, decided to go public and attended a press conference at Ellenborough Park hotel in Cheltenham to spill the beans on their incredible win on Thursday.
Jess, who works as a business manager at a hair salon she runs with her sister, said: “The win gives us time to dream which we haven’t had before. We’ve had one week to think about this and we now have time to share lots of experiences and go on adventures with our family and friends.”
Explaining their reasoning to go public, she said: “I don’t want to lie to family and friends, I want to enjoy it with them. Maybe, naively, I thought we could tell a few people and it would be fine. But the list gets longer and soon you realise it would be a burden asking them to keep it quiet. Telling people makes it easier.”
Andy, who used to work for the BBC in London before moving to Wales, doesn’t say whether he thinks going public is the right or wrong thing to do, but he does give winners the pros and cons of both decisions. “It is a very difficult decision to make,” he says. “With that amount of money (£184m), it would be very difficult to keep it quiet, and by going public you do do more to help people.
“For others, I am sometimes the only other person who knows about their win, because they decide not to tell anyone, even family. It is a very privileged job to have to be there at a time in people’s lives they will never, ever forget.”
And he has kept in touch with a lot of the thousands of winners he has helped over the years, organising regular get-togethers because it can help when they talk to each other. “I get winners together when I can, which means they become friends,” he says. “It is good they can speak to each other, and understand each other’s experiences, and there is no arguing about who is going to pay for the drinks.”
And he said that some reactions are stranger than others, but nothing “surprises” him: “I have dealt with husbands who have not told wives, wives who have not told husbands, people who don’t tell their children. I’ve had to pretend to be bank managers and estate agents.”
During one visit, a winner was looking “jumpy” and kept looking out the window because he hadn’t told his wife about the win.
When Andy asked if he was going to, he told him: “No, we are perfectly happy but the way we do things is I look after the money and she doesn’t know what we have got so I don’t tell her.”
As an employee of Camelot, Andy is not allowed to play the lottery himself, but it doesn’t stop him dreaming like the rest about us about what he would do with a win.
“I can’t play, but sometimes when I am helping them to fill out the forms I think about what I would do if I was allowed and had won,” he says.
“I think £100,000 would be great because you would be able to take a substantial chunk off the mortgage and it would give a bit of breathing space to enjoy the money.”