Essex couple enjoy a Rio gold £1MMillion Lotto win

The lucky pair, Bill and Jean Dicken, discovered their win on the Monday morning after the draw although they originally thought it was rather more modest than the life-changing £1MMillion it turned out to be.

Jean said, “It was about 9am on Monday morning, I was tidying up after breakfast and Bill was in the office when all of a sudden he came downstairs saying ‘I think I’ve won, come and have a look at this’ and from then on it’s been an amazing rollercoaster!”

Joining her husband in front of the computer screen Jean looked at the Raffle selection and decided, with Bill, that they had won £20,000. The pair were overjoyed but not completely trusting their computer skills, they agreed Bill would pop to the local shop so they could check the ticket on the machine. Bill jumped in the car and headed off into town, returning 15 minutes later with a slip of paper and instructions to call Camelot.

Jean said, “I rang Camelot and told the lady that I thought we’d won £20,000 whereupon she said, ‘It’s not £20,000, congratulations, you’ve won £1MMillion’. Well, all I could do was say ‘no’ over and over again as I tried to take it in. Poor Bill who was sitting beside me thought this meant we’d won nothing at all!”

Family win

With the win confirmed the pair shed a tear or two of joy while they slowly realised what the win would mean to them and their family. Jean called her daughter with news of the win and explained where she had hidden the ticket, she said, “I rang our eldest daughter to share the news and tell her where the ticket was hidden just in case all the excitement was too much for us and we didn’t survive the day!”

The win was extra special for the couple after they had followed Team GB's success in Rio. “August has been an unforgettable month. We were glued to the telly rooting for Team GB, especially Max Whitlock who trains nearby, little did we think that as a result of the success of Team GB, we’d be sitting here as Essex’s latest millionaires!”

The pair, who have been married for 53 years, are still taking in the magnitude of the win so have made few concrete plans for the money although are definite much of it will be shared with their two daughters and seven grandchildren. A new car to replace their Peugeot which is on its last legs plus a few renovations to the home they have lived in for 22 years will also be on the cards.

In the Lotto Medal Draw there were an additional 67 life changing prizes up for grabs to celebrate each of the medals won by Team GB in Rio and to thank players for their on-going support of our elite athletes.

The National Lottery plays a unique role in supporting the UK’s elite athletes, with no-one contributing more to elite sport in the UK than National Lottery players. British athletes have won 700 Olympic and Paralympic medals since National Lottery funding was first awarded to elite athletes in 1997. Alongside elite sport, The National Lottery has invested over £5 billion in grassroots sport to date, supporting more than 150 different sports and creating opportunities for everyone to get fit.