Lotto millionaire club celebrates 1,500th win

CHAMPAGNE flowed yesterday as more than 30 millionaire jackpot winners gathered at a lavish ceremony to mark a milestone in the British National Lottery.

The lucky players, collectively worth over £100 million, broke open the bubbly to celebrate the 1,500th million pound jackpot win since the competition started in 1994.

The 1,500th winner, chef Tim Davis, from Torquay, scooped over £3 million in last Wednesday’s jackpot.

He joined other members of the exclusive millionaire’s club at the star-studded event at the Mandarin Oriental Hyde Park Hotel, Knightsbridge.

Mr Davis, 42, said that his enormous win had not yet sunk in.

“You go through all manner of emotions. I’m still not sure exactly what I’m going to do but I’m going to take my time,” he said.

He said that he was enjoying taking advice from other winners and that he had made some good friends already.

Many of them had invited him for dinner and offered him valuable advice on about how to cope with such a dramatic win.

“I am still going to go back to the restaurant and help them out,” he added.

Mr Davis was also joined by the National Lottery’s biggest winner, Tom Naylor, 46, from Wednesbury in the West Midlands, who won over £15 million in November 2001.

Since his win Mr Naylor has bought a barn conversion, jetted to New York on Concorde, traded his old Ford for two Jags, and regularly holds parties for hundreds of friends.