It is 30 years ago today that The National Lottery began in Britain with nearly £100 billion paid out to lucky winners.
To mark the anniversary, 30 millionaires from the last three decades came together to celebrate the big day and share their life-changing stories from boob jobs to fast cars and luxury holidays but also personal tragedy.
Kind-hearted Ray Wragg, 86, from Sheffield won a £7,649,520 Lotto jackpot in January 2000 with late wife, Barbara, but has amazingly given the majority of his winnings to good causes. Ray retired as soon as his winning numbers came up, and the couple immediately started thinking about who they could help. He said: “We gave £5.5million away to family and friends, hospitals and good causes.”
The couple once paid £12,000 for war veterans to revisit the WWII battlefield of Monte Cassino and have also taken 250 local school children on an all expenses paid trip to see Disney on Ice, among many other things.
Ray very sadly lost his beloved wife, Barbara in 2018 but has since found happiness again after meeting Anne on a cruise and they’ve just jointly purchased a three-bedroom bungalow together.
Sarah Cockings, 40, from Whitley Bay, won a £3,045,705 Lotto jackpot in April 2005 and decided to help her family out in other ways - by getting them boob jobs - but not before she finished uni. She explained: “When I won, I was studying social care at Northumbria University and living at home. It was my mum’s dream to see me graduate, so I went back to university.”
She also treated herself to a Swarovski diamond-studded watch immediately after winning. She has since bought her own house in the Whitley Bay and also paid for breast enhancement surgery for herself and her two sisters.
Donna Hendry, 54, from West Lothian won a £4,078,509 jackpot on Lotto in January 2015 along with husband David but five years later, David sadly passed away after a short battle with cancer. The couple had been together for most of their lives, 30 years, and married for 23.
The pair both gave up their jobs straight away and bought a bigger house in the same area. They travelled widely including to Memphis, because David was such an Elvis fan, and it was after returning from a trip to California to celebrate Donna’s 50th in February 2020 that David was diagnosed.
“He died four months later and our son was only 18 at the time. He’s just graduated with a first, and I know his father would have been so proud.” Celebrity photographer, Rankin, who has photographed icons from Queen Elizabeth II to the Rolling Stones, gathered the extraordinary individuals worth more than £190 million at his London studio.
He created both intimate individual portraits and a historic group shot of the thirty winners – representing just a fraction of the 7,400 millionaires created since the first draw. The landmark line-up – who have won £194,465,555 between them – includes Lesley Higgins from Aberdeenshire and Gareth Bull from Mansfield who won £57.9 million and £40.6 million respectively on EuroMillions.
Other major Lotto winners include Jackie King from Grimsby who won £14million in 1998 and Peter Congdon from Truro who won £13.5 million in 2015. Earlier this year The Mirror revealed how big-hearted Peter, 76, has turned unlikely chauffeur and was using his fortune to change people’s lives.
He found his calling after coming to the rescue of a stranded bride during the pandemic. He stepped in to help the damsel in distress when her nuptials were cancelled four times and she could not get a wedding car in time.
Now the big-hearted grandad-of-ten, from Truro in Cornwall, has his own fleet of cars for the needy, including anyone from teens going to prom or people facing the end of their lives in a hospice. He has even bought a clutch of homes that he rents out at low prices to young people to help them get onto the property ladder.
Speaking about the brush with fate with the bride which led him to his new life Peter said: “It was such a memorable moment, when the bride walked out, she was expecting to climb into her dad’s car and instead, she looked up and saw my Bentley parked across the street, and realised she did have a beautiful wedding car. She wept so much that she had to go back in to get her make up fixed.”
Waiving what would be a £500 luxury wedding car fee for all of his ‘customers’, Peter said: “Since then, when I hear of a bride who can’t afford a car, I’ll step in to volunteer. I think I’ve taken more than 25 Cornish brides to say ‘I do’.
“I always turn up in my best suit to help make it the happiest day of her life, and the only payment I need is to see the joy on their faces.”
The winners travelled from far and wide to take part in the photo-shoot, from the Scottish Highlands and Northern Ireland to Cornwall and Newcastle; with ages spanning from 25 to 80 years old.
Rankin said: “I am extremely lucky that I get to meet and work with extraordinary people, from famous actors and models through to NHS nurses. I remember when The National Lottery first started and it was intriguing to meet the real winners and hear their stories and experiences. They are normal people who have had an extraordinary thing happen to them, transforming their lives. That is what we set out to capture.”