Unemployed mechanic splits €102m with 'Magnificent Seven'
Wednesday November 11 2009
JOHN WALSH couldn't sleep the night his lottery numbers came up.
Having checked them on Teletext at 3am on Sunday he thought it wise to make sure he was not dreaming by waking his family.
And as a further precaution he drove into his office in Liverpool just to check that the £46m (€51m) prize-winning ticket was still safely in his desk drawer. Thankfully it was.
But when the 57-year-old IT agency worker rang his six fellow syndicate members to break the news, he was surprised at their reaction.
"I didn't quite get the response I expected because, with the economy in the state that it is in, everyone thought I was calling them to say they had been made redundant," he said yesterday.
The Hewlett-Packard staff that formed their group in Liverpool will reap 'just' £6.5m (€7.3m) each. The identity of the syndicate, which reportedly included an eighth player until he pulled out before Friday's EuroMillions draw, was unveiled at the same time as that of a Welsh couple with whom they share the £91m (€102m) jackpot.
Unemployed mechanic Les Scadding (58) and his wife Samantha (38), who runs her own PR business, were working out what to do with £45,570,835.50.
The couple from Caerleon, near Newport, said that among the initial purchases they had planned were a Range Rover and a holiday home in Barbados. They are thought to be the seventh set of lottery winners from Gwent in just three years.
Mr Scadding, treated for testicular cancer five years ago, won the prize after deviating from his normal selection of numbers and opting for two lucky dip cards. He displayed admirable self-belief, telling a news conference in Cardiff that he always knew that fate would deliver for him.
"It is a funny thing, but for the last 12 years I have always said I'm going to win the lottery," Mr Scadding insisted.
Meanwhile, in the Wirral, the newly dubbed 'Magnificent Seven' -- Mr Walsh, James Bennett (28), Sean Connor (32), Alex Parry (19), Emma Cartwright (23), Ceri Scullion (35), and Donna Rhodes (39) -- were considering the changes about to happen to them from their previous lives as £20,000-a-year temps. (© Independent News Service)
- Jonathan Brown
Irish Independent
