A smiling, slightly awkward, but inescapably normal couple sat perched on a pair of golden thrones in the damp grounds of a hotel on Monday afternoon, clutching an enormous oblong of paper on which were inscribed 13 small but life-changing words.
Neither Nigel Page nor his partner, Justine Laycock, needed to look at the piece of paper they were holding up for the cameras. They both knew what it said: “Fifty-six million, eight thousand, one hundred and thirteen pounds and twenty pence.”
Whatever shrieks and whoops the couple and their children may have emitted on Saturday morning when they discovered they had become the UK’s biggest ever lottery winners had long since fallen silent and the only extraordinary thing about Page and Laycock as they emerged from anonymity to meet the press was how extraordinarily ordinary they seemed.
Saturday morning, Page explained, had begun as it usually did. He had gone down for breakfast leaving Laycock to doze on. Then, as he and his daughter were eating, the news came on and he learned that the £112 million (US$176 million) EuroMillions jackpot was to be shared between a ticket bought in Spain and one bought in the UK.
Already feeling moderately lucky as he had won £55 in Wednesday’s Lotto draw, Page logged on to his computer to see if he had had any joy with the money he had reinvested in two lucky dips for the EuroMillions lottery. He had.
“It just popped up on the screen,” he said. “Congratulations: you have won £56 million — and 20p.”
He then headed upstairs to rouse Laycock.
“I normally leave her to sleep in on Saturdays, but I trundled upstairs and said: ‘It’s important. You need to check this.’”
Laycock, 41, has decided to give up working as an estate agent, “my boss, bless him, is devastated,” she said.
Page, 43, reckons he “probably won’t be going back” to his work in property maintenance.
His dream would be to set up an indoor skydiving center where he could indulge his passion for freefall.
“I might buy myself a wind tunnel and play in that. There are only three [indoor centers] in the country and I plan to use some of the win to set up the first one in the south-west,” he said.
His partner’s fantasies are rather more terrestrial.
“It would be lovely to get a five or six-bedroom house with a pool and lots of space, but we really enjoy the area we live in now so we won’t move far,” she said.
The UK’s 980th richest person thinks he might also quite like to have another go at gambling. After all, he mused, “I’ve still got £53 in my lottery account that needs to be used up.”
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to