British couple thought they won £2.60 on EuroMillions - only to bag £61m jackpot
A lucky couple from Lancashire have revealed themselves as the winners of a staggering £61m EuroMillions jackpot – and admitted they initially thought they had pocketed just £2.60.
Richard and Debbie Nuttall, both aged 54, won a £61.7m share of the £123m jackpot prize from the draw on 30 January, with the other winning ticket bought in Spain.
The pair went public on Wednesday and told of the moment they realised they had won the jackpot while holidaying in Spain for their 30th wedding anniversary.
Initially, the couple thought they would not have enough money for a pint of beer but later discovered they had enough riches for twelve Valiant 81’ Horizon luxury mega-yachts worth £5 million apiece.
Mr Nuttall, who runs his own accountancy business, said: “It was the second day of our holiday and I had got up early to finish off a bit of work. I noticed the email from The National Lottery stating that there was ‘exciting news about your ticket’.
“So I checked my National Lottery account and saw the balance had gone up and we’d won £2.60. Fair enough. I shut my laptop, had breakfast and then we set off for the day, driving around the island. We enjoyed the sea views, blue skies and windsurfers before heading back.
“It was early afternoon when we spotted another email saying we should check our account. I thought it was odd and there must be a glitch in the system to get a duplicate email but I logged in again to my National Lottery account to check. We were totally stunned, it said we had won over £61m!”
After two emails from the National Lottery, the couple thought they could have fallen victim to a scam, Mr Nuttall explained.
They frantically tried to call the National Lottery number but were in an area with limited signal so then got their youngest daughter on the case, he added.
Their daughter managed to log in to their account from the UK and revealed the life-changing news.
However, the pair still could not get through to the National Lottery and started to drive around the island in search of reception, he added.
Mr Nuttall said: ”We must have looked a right sight, Deb was holding the phone as high as she could, checking the number of bars as I drove! She started shouting ‘stop here, stop here!’ and I pulled over on a verge.”
Finally, the couple managed to get through after an angry bus driver asked them to move their car out of a spot he wanted to park in, Mr Nuttall said.
He added: “I had to ask the lady on the phone to give me a few minutes to move my car, hoping the signal didn’t drop in the meantime! We continued with the call, the lady checked with her manager and then came back on the line to say - and I’ll never forget these words - ‘So, I need to get this right…I can confirm you are the winners of the £61,708,321 EuroMillions jackpot prize!’”
“Well, by this time me and Debs are going mental…jumping up and down in our car seats, punching the air, thumping the dashboard…the car must have been rocking...it was the whole Delboy and Rodney scene when they finally became millionaires outside Sotheby’s!”
The couple were two days in to their week long windsurfing holiday in Fuerteventura when they found out they were going to be mulit-millionaires.
Unable to settle with the excitement, they decided to fly home the following day, Mr Nuttall added.
Now the couple will both enter early retirement, Ms Nuttall has already handed in her notice at her civil engineering job where she works as a Bidding & Estimating Support Assistant.
Mr Nuttall is now making plans to leave his own accountancy business after over 20 years.
With the new-found fortune the mother and father hope to buy a new family home in Lancashire and a holiday home in Portugal, they added.
Mr Nuttall said he hopes to have a ‘Golf swing room’ is his new room and has already bought a new BMW X5- specially chosen for its spacious boot to store his golf clubs.
The 54-year-olds will contribute to a charity close to their hearts, BK’s Heroes, which was set up in memory of their nephew who died of a rare condition, Tubular Interstitial Nephritis and Uveitis, at age 27.
The foundation aims to raise awareness and funds for brain cancer and kidney disease.
Richard has been playing EuroMillions for eight years, buying one Lucky Dip line each Tuesday and Friday by Direct Debit through the National Lottery website. Whilst he has landed a few smaller wins, he admits he never dreamt of landing such a huge prize.
The couple have taken the 29th spot on The National Lottery Rich List. They are the 39th UK winner to bank a prize of £50M or more on EuroMillions, and join the more than 7,000 millionaires created by The National Lottery since 1994.
The winning numbers in the EuroMillions draw on Tuesday 30 January, 2024 were 05, 10, 19, 27, 30 and the two Lucky Stars were 05 and 06. The jackpot prize was £123,416,462, which was shared between two ticket-holders, one in the UK and the other in Spain
Andy Carter, senior winners’ adviser at the National Lottery, said earlier this month: “This is absolutely incredible news and we’re delighted that we’ve received a claim.
“This is the first UK EuroMillions jackpot win of 2024, following on from an incredible 2023 which saw six UK EuroMillions jackpots won, including a £111.7 million win by an anonymous single ticket-holder in June.
