Couple announced as £61 million lottery winners thought they'd won £2.60

The British couple who scooped an eye-watering £61 million on the Euromillions originally thought they’d won just £2.60. I can imagine that was a nice surprise for them.

Richard and Debbie Nuttall, both 54, from Colne in Lancashire, won a £61,708,231 share of the £123 million jackpot prize from the draw on January 30, with the other winning ticket being purchased in Spain.

The couple were on holiday in Fuerteventura celebrating their 30th wedding anniversary, when they found out they’d won - but originally Richard thought they’d only bagged £2.60.

However, when he was sent a second email he decided to log in and check their account.

“I thought it was odd and there must be a glitch in the system to get a duplicate email but I logged in again to my National Lottery account to check. We were totally stunned, it said we had won over six-one-million,” Richard said.

“We just couldn’t make sense of it. My first thought was it must be a scam or there was some mix up."

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As the pair were on holiday they had a poor phone signal so decided to call on their family to try and confirm there good news.

"My youngest came back quickly and we asked her to log into our National Lottery account from the UK and double-check," explained Richard.

"She put in my details and then just kept repeating ’oh my god, oh my god, oh my god!!’ It must be real, this was the official National Lottery website we were all looking at.”

Eventually, they got through to the National Lottery and were able to officially confirm their good fortune - and were delighted, to say the least.

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Richard added: “By this time me and Debs are going mental, jumping up and down in our car seats, punching the air, thumping the dashboard, the car must have been rocking.”

The lucky couple alerted the National Lottery to the win earlier this month, when senior winners’ adviser Andy Carter said: “This is absolutely incredible news and we’re delighted that we’ve received a claim.

“This is the first UK EuroMillions jackpot win of 2024, following on from an incredible 2023 which saw six UK EuroMillions jackpots won, including a £111.7 million win by an anonymous single ticket-holder in June.

“Our focus is now on supporting this latest lucky ticket-holder through the process and helping them start to enjoy their truly life-changing win.”