Recalling the lottery millionaires whose lives were transformed by their very lucky numbers
From the five members of the same family who scooped £12m to the cancer survivor who collected an awesome £45.5m, Christie Bannon revisits Wales’ biggest Lottery winners...
WE all dream about what we’d do if we suddenly won a massive sum of money on the National Lottery.
But for a select few that dream has become a reality.
The instant cash injection gifts winners with financial stability, as well as the opportunity to splash out on things that used to be out of reach. Here we take a look at some of the lucky Welsh winners through the years.
■ The Davies family
Two years ago the Davies family, from Monmouth, scooped £12m each after hitting the EuroMillions jackpot.
Sales executive Stephanie Davies, her boyfriend, Steve Powell, her student sister, Courtney, her mum, Sonia, an admin assistant, and Sonia’s partner, Keith Reynolds, a regional director, made up the fivestrong syndicate that won £61m.
The day after their big win the family jetted off to a mystery destination in the sun but Courtney promised her friends that she’d head back for music festival Boomtown Fair.
At the time her friends admitted that she had been worried about paying for the £170 festival ticket out of her student loan, but then she became a teenage millionaire.
The family won in July 2016 as Sonia was with Keith in the USA to see his daughter graduate and for Sonia to have surgery after she was diagnosed with a tumour on her parathyroid gland.
After the surgery went well, Keith was scanning his emails and read about the EuroMillions rollover. Convinced they were the luckiest people on the planet and on a winning streak, they called Sonia’s daughter, Courtney, from the US to ask her to go and buy a ticket.
Stephanie said: “I thought Mum was mad calling me from holiday, but they were so insistent I knew we had to do it. My car was blocked in the drive by my boyfriend Steve’s, so to save time I made him drive me to buy a ticket instead of moving mine.”
After checking the numbers on her iPad and realising they’d won, Stephanie added: “I kept saying ‘we’ve won and I’m not joking’. I could see Steve was trying to read me to see whether I was telling the truth but I was so emotional, he decided to check.
“And he checked again. We giggled. We memorised the numbers and checked again. We checked the draw date again. We locked all our windows and doors and spoke in hushed voices just in case someone could hear that we had won.”
■ Les Scadding
The cancer survivor from Caerleon, near Newport, was convinced that he would one day win the jackpot and later scooped an incredible £45.5m in the EuroMillions.
Mr Scadding, a mechanic and lorry driver, won the life-changing prize with his wife, Samantha, after buying the winning ticket at a Tesco store in Newport while his bank account was £68 overdrawn.
He explained that it had become a joke in the family that he would become a millionaire.
“For the last 12 years I’ve always said I was going to win the lottery. My daughter lives in Abu Dhabi and she would ring me and say, ‘Have you won the lottery yet, Dad?’ and I’d say ‘Not yet’,” he said.
After the win, he said: “I called my daughter and she said: ‘Have you won the lottery yet?’ and I said: ‘Yes – I told you I would!’”
With the couple’s experiences of illness, they intended to give donations to heart and cancer charities after Samantha’s father, Roger, passed away from cancer two years before they won the jackpot.
■ Neath Port Talbot Hospital catering staff
Just last year, six members of a syndicate from Neath Port Talbot shared £4m each after a £25m EuroMillions win.
The catering staff at Neath Port Talbot Hospital celebrated by handing in their notice, with the exception of one winner, who had retired the year before.
“The Catering Girls”, made up of Julie Saunders, Doreen Thompson, Louise Ward, Jean Cairns, Sian Jones
and Julie Amphlett, didn’t check the winning ticket until the following day.
Their wishlist included items such as a tumble-dryer, new mattresses and even a trip to Las Vegas, while the youngest member, Louise, said she was looking forward to her upcoming wedding.
She said: “I had 80 people on my list and was trying to cut down on the numbers as it was too many. I can now have as many guests as I want!”
■ Sandra Fosbrooke and Ken Henry
Sandra Fosbrooke and Ken Henry, from Llanelli, celebrated a £12.8m win back in 2005.
Asda checkout worker Sandra and her meat packer partner, Ken, realised they had won the sum of money after checking their numbers in a newspaper.
A neighbour said: “He drove down to Asda in Llanelli where Sandra is on the checkouts and told her, ‘I’m going to tell you something that will change your life’.”
Sandra was allowed to return home by her manager and the pair had discussions with Camelot officials. The couple planned to buy a new house, two cars and a villa in Gran Canaria after taking a long break away.
Sandra is used to good luck. Her father, Bob Cochrane, from Penyfan, Llanelli, won several thousand pounds on Littlewoods Pools some years before.
■ Barrie Bradley and his wife, Yvonne
The Llanelli couple became millionaires after Barrie’s dad, Bob, won a £3.5m share in a double-rollover jackpot on his 83rd birthday.
The World War II veteran, who took part in the D-Day landings and was later invalided out of the forces after being injured in a mortar attack, won the money back in March 2006, and gave all of it away.
Barrie and Yvonne were gifted £1m, while their son, Chris, and his family were also given £1m. Generous donations were also made to a number of charities before Bob passed away 11 months after winning.
The £1m meant Barrie could give up his job as a water mains worker, which saw him get up at 3am on a Monday and not get back home to Llanelli until Friday night every week.
It also allowed his wife, Yvonne, to give up her job as a factory worker and the couple moved house, as well as treating themselves to a Range Rover, a Volkswagen Golf turbo diesel and a Caribbean cruise.
Barrie, a father of one and grandfather of two, said he would advise other Lottery winners to “keep their feet on the ground” if they had a big win, and remember their friends.
His wife added: “Money does make you have things you couldn’t have, but it upsets you when you realise what you haven’t got.
“The best thing is that you can do what you like, go where you like and please yourself.”
■ William and Sophie Richards
William and Sophie Richards, from Swansea, won £1m on a lucky dip after Mr Williams made an impromptu trip to the shops to pick up some mushy peas.
Self-employed William was on his way back to Swansea from Comic Con in Cardiff in May this year when his wife asked him to run the errand to complete their roast dinner.
He stopped by Cardiff Bay Asda and treated himself to five lucky dip tickets.
Mr Richards said: “I scanned the results on my app and couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw that I’d matched the Lotto Millionaire Raffle code and won £1million.”
The couple, who met while working at Asda, and have been married for four years and now run their own business, called Toys and Masks.
■ Christine Mills
Christine Mills, from Cardiff, pocketed more than £1.1m when she and five members of her family netted a whopping £6.9m in a syndicate win in February 2007.
Grandmother Christine and husband John walked away with £1,164,894.56 from the bumper £88m EuroMillions draw, but she said: “It changes your life in a nice way but it doesn’t change you.”
She was on holiday in a Porthcawl caravan park with all her extended family when they learned of the massive win.
“We couldn’t believe it, it was so fantastic,” the former occupational therapist said.
“We’ve always been a happy, close family before winning the lottery and nothing has changed. We still see each other often and go out for family birthdays and things. My husband and I retired straightaway. Life is fab. We go on holidays often, and we support charities dear to us.”
■ Lyn Sexton
Lyn Sexton, from Merthyr Tydfil, and his civil partner, Ian Pearce, took home £1m in 2012.
Since then the couple have been on holidays around the world.
After their win they said they planned to take the whole family on a trip of a lifetime to the Caribbean, where Lyn’s nephew Rhys would marry his fiancée.
Lyn said: “It’s been unreal and it’s still not sunk in. We are still working out what we want to do in the long run, but we are going to take the family on a big holiday as my nephew proposed so they are going to get married there.”