Seeing is believing – almost

Paul Newton, from Weston-super-Mare, squinted at his "good news" email from The National Lottery while waiting in his car and thought he had won a "brilliant" £1,106. He tried to check his tablet for confirmation, but that had stopped working, so he returned to staring at his phone.

Paul said, "I have bad eyesight, but looked again on my phone to check I had it right. Through my squinting, the numbers looked very big on the screen but I could clearly see it was actually a win of over a million quid! I freaked! My first thought was I had to tell my wife, so I made my excuses to leave and drove 60 miles to tell Tania in person."

Paul continues, "After tracking Tania down and giving her the look that meant I needed to tell her something urgently, I took her back home. We have 110 steps to our house and I wouldn't tell her anything until we got inside. Once in there, I just yelled 'We have won enough money to clear the mortgage and once that's done, we've got another million on top!"

Paul admits that the win is only just starting to sink in and it has been a roller coaster since they discovered the news. They have three grown-up children between them and have already given them the money to help them become mortgage free – something which they describe as the "most amazing feeling ever".

Their first purchases were a new tablet and smartphone – as "a little treat" for themselves – and Paul says, "I play by Direct Debit as I didn't ever want to win and lose my ticket! We play the same line – it is made up of family birthdays, apart from the last one which is the house number where we live. We will definitely keep on playing; I have no plans to cancel the Direct Debit!"

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Hear Paul's life-changing phone call.