The winners of Britain's ever biggest lottery jackpot have been announced - and they are a couple from Gloucestershire.
The couple are named Joe and Jess Thwaite and won was £184,262,899.10. An event took place in Cheltenham this morning (May 19) to reveal the winners.
Joe, 49, a communications sales engineer, and Jess, 44, who runs a hairdressing salon with her sister, have been married for 11 years and have two primary school-aged children.
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Mrs Thwaite said: “The win gives us time to dream, which we haven’t had before. We’ve had one week to think about this and we now have time to share lots of experiences and go on adventures with our family and friends.
“Our two children have always talked about going to Hawaii, I’ve no idea why but we can now make that dream come true.
“They have always wanted a horse box for our ponies rather than the run-down trailer we use.
“Just to see their faces when we can make these things come true will be worth every penny.”
At a press conference on Thursday, Mr Thwaite said he was working on Tuesday and by 4pm he thought he “better buy a ticket” because he was aware of the jackpot.
He said he regularly buys tickets, adding: “I normally buy them when it’s a good amount, so when there’s a lot of money I’ll put it on. I use the app, and have a quick check a couple of times a week and I’ll put it on.
“But generally my luck is pretty terrible, to be honest with you.”
His wife Jess added: “He tries to convince me to buy them thinking I’ll have more luck, but actually it’s him.”
Mr Thwaite said that when he received an email telling him he won a prize he thought it was a lucky dip.
“Then I looked at the amount and I put the phone down. And I picked the phone up again, and I looked at the amount again.
“I first thought it was in the thousands,” he said, adding that he thought it was “life-changing”.
But then he “started counting the digits”, adding: “Amazing, but also surreal.”
He said they have been trying to move house for quite a while and he went on Rightmove.
“You go on Rightmove and you set your limits on what you can afford, and in the past everything we’ve kind of wanted is far beyond what we can afford so I thought I don’t need to filter, I can actually just look at anything,” he said.
“I feel this is the way we can be honest with them all, we can enjoy it with them all.”
Mrs Thwaite said her husband “took on the baton” of doing the lottery from her father, who died seven years ago.
Mrs Thwaite said her father “always used the same numbers”, but her husband said: “I always go with a lucky dip because I think that’s easier.”
It's not the first time a Gloucestershire couple have scooped one of the biggest jackpots around, as reported by GloucestershireLive. Back in 2010, Justine Laycock and Nigel Page, of Cirencester, were announced as winners of a £56m jackpot.
At the time, it was Britain's biggest ever prize. Mr Page said he was simply a "white van man". He had purchased two Lucky Dips for the EuroMillions.
He was encouraged by winning £55 in a Lotto draw. The win was shared with one other ticket, bought by someone in Spain.
In 2010, the Cirencester couple's win made them richer than Kylie Minogue (then £35m) and Van Morrison (then £50m). Mr Page and Ms Laycock pledged to stay in the area but wanted to move house.
But this time around there's no sharing involved. Today's Cheltenham announcement catapulted the 2022 winners into the UK rich list.
