A SOMERSET couple have become millionaires after winning the lottery.

Guitar salesman Paul Newton, 55, was pretty chuffed when he initially thought he'd won £1,106 in Saturday's Lotto.

He undersetimated his winnings after checking his e-mails on his iPad while he was waiting in his car for an appointment.

When he tried to double check his "good luck", his tablet stopped working.

 

A couple from Weston-super-Mare describe their Lotto win of £1,176,544 from the draw on 28 February 2015 as ‘the most extraordinary and amazing thing that could ever have happened to us’.

 

 

Paul, who plays bass guitar for the band Eastertown, said: “I have bad eyesight, but looked again on my iPhone 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 (47) in person. I knew she was having her hair cut.

“By this stage I was getting frantic. I went to the hairdresser’s and her appointment had been cancelled, so I got the dogs and went looking around town to see if I could find her.

"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!'”

He said that the £1,176,544 win was "the most extraordinary and amazing thing that could ever have happened" to the couple from Weston.

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".

As well as paying off their own mortgage. Tania and Paul plan to make a few home improvements.

Their first purchases were a new iPhone and iPad.

Paul said: “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 changed this one seven years ago when we moved to our current home.”

The couple, who have been together since 2004 and married in 2009, will both carry on working.

The winning numbers were 4, 7, 9, 10, 19, 47 and the Bonus Ball was 43. They say they will definitely carry on playing and have absolutely no plans to cancel the direct debit.