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.”
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