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

Breaking the silence as she and her husband David digested the news that they had won half of Saturday’s £66m lottery jackpot, Carol Martin’s response was a lesson in sober understatement.



Reliving the moment for the national media on Wednesday morning, David Martin said: “I remember [the first thing that] Carol said to me: ‘What have we done?’”

Describing their shock at scooping a share of the biggest ever Lotto prize, the couple from Hawick in the Scottish Borders revealed they had only checked their winning ticket after a friend urged them to see if they had the right numbers on Sunday morning.

The Martins, both 54, were one of two ticket holders who matched the six winning numbers 26, 27, 46, 47, 52 and 58 from Saturday night. Amid the obligatory showering of champagne, they received a cheque for £33,035,323 – half of a record jackpot that followed 14 consecutive rollovers.

Speaking at the Camelot press conference in Kirknewton, south of Edinburgh, David Martin went on: “The initial shock was surreal. If we’d won £50,000 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.”

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 the past five years. They last saw Lisa when they visited her for Christmas in 2014, and said she was initially concerned that they were calling with bad news when they phoned her while she was driving to work on Monday morning.



Libby Brooks (@libby_brooks) Lottery winners David and Carol Martin face the press after their £33m win https://t.co/CFIm2zCW6b

Their daughter was the first person to learn of the couple’s extraordinary win, and both talked sincerely of their embarrassment at having to hide their win from their employers and colleagues.

Carol has worked at a local Boots for most of her life, while David is a section leader for Borders Care and Repair, helping disabled and older people with specialist equipment in their homes.



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 choice to go public with their win 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 33 million 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.”

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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 obvious beneficiaries.

They also suggested they could help those hit by the recent flooding, which affected much of the Borders: “Hawick is a tight-knit 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 revealed he has been unable to play golf for the last few months because of a heart condition. Currently waiting for a procedure to steady an irregular heartbeat, he joked: “My heart’s been jumping about all year, so it’s jumping a bit more now. Everyone slags [off] the NHS, but they’ve been really good to me.”

In sharp contrast to Scotland’s other famous lottery couple, Euromillions winners Chris and Colin Weir, who have donated substantial amounts 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.