UK: Lottery winners named as Scottish couple Carol and David Martin

[umbertino]

Husband and wife from Scottish Borders intend to make first dent in £33m ($47.5M) fortune by flying daughter from Australia first class

 

 

Libby Brooks Scotland correspondent

 

Wednesday 13 January 2016 11.55 GMT

 

 

 

Carol and David Martin, the couple who have won half of Saturday’s £66m ($95.1M) lottery jackpot, have described their shock at scooping a share of the biggest ever Lotto prize.

 

The Martins, both 54, from Hawick in the Scottish Borders, said they only checked their winning ticket after a friend urged them to see if they had the right numbers on Sunday morning.

 

Speaking at a press conference in Kirknewton, south of Edinburgh, on Wednesday, David Martin said: “The initial shock was surreal. If we’d won £50,000 ($72,067) we’d have been dancing round the living room. But the £33m is still really unbelievable. We just sat quietly and didn’t speak to each other for about five minutes.”

 

He added: “I remember [the first thing that] Carol said to me: ‘What have we done?’”

 

The couple said their first purchase would be a first-class flight for their 26-year-old daughter Lisa to visit them from Australia, where she has lived for five years. They last saw their daughter when they visited her for Christmas in 2014.

 

Carol works at a local Boots, while David is a section leader for Borders Care and Repair, helping disabled and older people with specialist equipment in their own homes. Both described their embarrassment at having to hide their win from their employers and colleagues over the past few days.

 

David explained: “It’s a big, big thing. These are people that you work with and you trust and then all of a sudden you’re giving them a white lie. Today we felt more relaxed and told them. When you speak to everybody they are so so happy for you.”

 

While both intend to take early retirement, they said this was the biggest decision they had to make so far.

 

The decision to go public was actually far easier, they said. “This would be impossible to keep secret,” said Carol. “We always said we’d never go public, but we’d go public just by phoning our friends.”

 

“You can’t hide 33m quid,” David added. “And you [the media] would be there in Hawick knocking on our neighbours’ doors.” To laughter from the assembled reporters, he went on to explain the correct pronounciation of his home town – which has challenged some southern tongues– as “Hoyk” not “Haw-ick”.

 

Asked whether they intended to stay in Hawick, David said: “People don’t realise when you live in a community like that it’s a great place to live. People in general are really, really nice. It would be a big decision to move away.”

 

The couple, who have been married for 28 years, said they were only just beginning to consider what to do with the money, but that family, friends and local charities would be top of the list.

 

They also suggested they could help those affected by the recent flooding: “Hawick is a tiny community, and the company I worked for was on standby during the floods,” said David. “But it’s not just Hawick, it’s been the whole of the country. When you see the damage, it’s horrible.”

 

Both keen followers of sport, David is planning a trip to the Augusta Masters golf tournament while Carol will be at Wimbledon for the tennis this summer.

 

David has been unable to play golf himself for the last few months because of a heart condition. David, who is awaiting a procedure to steady an irregular heartbeat, joked: “My heart’s been jumping about all year, so it’s jumping a bit more now.” He added: “Everyone slags [off] the NHS, but they’ve been really good to me.”

 

In sharp contrast to Scotland’s other famous lottery couple, the Euromillions winners Chris and Colin Weir, who donated substantial amounts of their winnings to the SNP and the campaign for Scottish independence, David said: “We’ll let the politicians deal with the politics. We’re not interested.”

 

Saturday’s other joint winner has yet to come forward, but has until 7 July to claim their prize.

 

 

http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/jan/13/lottery-winners-scottish-couple-carol-david-martin-33m

Edited January 13, 2016 by umbertino

[SnowGlobe7]

funny i know a carol and dave smith...lol