The Scaddings from Newport pledged to swap the beaches of South Wales for the white sands of the Caribbean as they were revealed today as Britain’s record-breaking lottery winners.
Les Scadding, 58, and Samatha Peachey-Scadding, 38, who runs a marketing company, have picked up a winning cheque for £45.5 million after scooping the Euromillions jackpot. The couple, who do not select their own numbers, were blessed by the Lucky Dip random generator in a branch of Tesco.
The other winning ticket, which shares the £91 million jackpot, was held by a syndicate of IT workers in a Liverpool call-centre staff. They said today that they had all handed in their notice.
Mr Scadding, a former mechanic and haulage driver who is now unemployed, said he would upgrade his Citroen C5 to a Range Rover Sport.
The couple from Caerleon, near Newport, said they would spend more time in Barbados, where they have enjoyed holidays in the past.
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Mr Scadding discovered that he and his wife had won the jackpot after going to the supermarket on Saturday evening to buy some groceries. He thought he would check his Euromillions ticket on the way out of the shop.
Mr Scadding said: “When I asked the people behind the counter to check the numbers the machine just printed out a pink slip telling me to contact Camelot.
“I thought I might have won around £50,000 and I rushed home to tell Samantha.”
After frantic double checking online, he said: “It was a very funny couple of minutes. We just looked at each other while it sunk in before we got on the phone to Camelot.”
Taking the news in their stride, the couple decided to celebrate over Sunday lunch with Mrs Peachey-Scadding’s mother in their favourite restaurant, The Priory in Caerleon.
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Mr Scadding said: “We always go to The Priory, as I know the owner really well, so we wouldn’t have gone anywhere different.
“We ordered a couple of bottles of champagne and just had a quiet chat about it all, and tried to let it all sink in.”
Mrs Scadding-Peachey, who runs a marketing company called Simple Profitable Solutions, said: “There is quite a lot of pressure involved in running your own business, and I’ve been working 12-hour days recently. This win means I can take my foot off the pedal and relax a bit.”
The couple plan to move to a bigger house, but say they will probably stay in South Wales, although they may also buy a holiday home.
In the last three years, there have been six lottery wins of more than £1 million in the Newport area but all those winnings combined add up to just half of the prize scooped by the couple.
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A Camelot spokesman said: “They say lightning doesn’t strike twice — but it has struck six times in Gwent before the latest big win. You can’t explain why they are so lucky but maybe it is something in the Welsh water.”
The group of office workers, who were employed by Hewlett Packard carrying out IT work at a BT office in Liverpool. They only formed their syndicate - called the Magnificent Seven - four months ago.
The syndicate includes John Walsh, 57, James Bennett, 28, Sean Connor, 32, Alex Parry, 19, Emma Cartwright, 23, Ceri Scullion, 35 and Donna Rhodes, 39, who have each banked £6.5 million.
Syndicate leader Mr Walsh said: “I couldn’t sleep on Sunday morning so ended up checking the numbers on Teletext at 3am.
“I couldn’t believe it when all our numbers came up. I had to wake up my wife, son and daughter so they could double check I wasn’t dreaming.”
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Miss Parry, who was the youngest winner in the syndicate, only left Wallasey School, Wirral, just over a year ago.
She said: “My sister Natasha works in the same office as me but is not part of the syndicate. She was happy for me but I think she was secretly a bit gutted when she found out the news.”