Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
BY MAURICE FITZMAURICE
EUROMILLIONS winners Frances and Patrick Connolly celebrated one of the biggest jackpots in history with a mug of tea and a cuddle.
The couple from Moira, Co Down, kept their feet firmly on the ground after getting a confirmation email from Lottery bosses telling them they had just won £114,969,775.70.
And yesterday, as the jubilant husband and wife were unveiled as the winners of the fourth largest Euromillions prize, they promised to spread the joy saying “we are going to make some people millionaires”.
They could not contain their joy as they told how they have “no intentions of keeping all that money”.
The couple came face-to-face with the media at the Culloden Hotel on the outskirts of Belfast.
Frances, 52, and 54-year-old Patrick, who have three grown-up daughters and are currently living in rented accommodation, revealed they have so far drawn up a list of 50 people they are going to share their collossal winnings with.
Frances, who works for the social affairs magazine View, said when they first told friends “not a living soul believed us”.
But she added that later one pal was “lucky they did not crash the car, they went mental” when they heard.
OVERWHELMING
The lucky dip ticket was bought on New Year’s Day with the numbers 1, 8, 11, 25 and 28 and lucky stars 4 and 6 making the couple multi-millionaires.
Frances said: “We don’t really do excited – perhaps I raised my voice just a bit at the time when I found out – but we celebrated with a cup of tea and a hug.”
Patrick added: “We really didn’t know what to do or how to react and we didn’t sleep a wink that night.
“We rang Camelot at 8am in the morning to verify the win. Then it started to dawn on us that it was true even though it still hasn’t really sunk in.”
Frances was knitting a jumper for her daughter’s return from New Zealand as Patrick checked the numbers on three different websites before turning to her and saying “we’ve won”.
Frances replied, “How much”, joking she assumed they had won something like £1,000.
She added: “A couple of expletives later I said, ‘You must be joking’.
“All conversations about what you’d do with the money went out the window. We just didn’t believe it.”
She said “quite a few” people will be made millionaires and “it’s going to be so much fun” handing the money out.
She added: “The pleasure for me is going to be seeing people’s faces.”
The couple’s three daughters were not told until Thursday when all the paperwork was signed.
Frances said: “It’s overwhelming, I just don’t think it’s sunk in yet.
“This is a massive sum of money and we want it to have a huge impact on the lives of other people we know and love as well as on our family.”
Asked what they’ll spend the money on, the pair appeared determined to remain level-headed and added there’s no way they will be “joining the jetset”.