Hemel Hempstead man among £1m lottery winners after dad’s encouragement

Terry Hannigan took his dad’s advice to join the Postcode Lottery and won £76,923 just five months later.

Terry, 59, was chatting last Christmas with his 78-year-old father Mike, who has played for a decade, and he recommended signing up.

It has been revealed that Terry, a former IT manager, was shocked to win early into entering the prize competition. He said: “My mum and dad do the Postcode Lottery and dad convinced me around Christmas time that it would be worth joining.

“He’ll be very impressed. I think he’s been playing for around 10 years. He’ll say, ‘give me some of the money. I didn’t know what to expect. This is brilliant, thank you.”

Eight other residents living in HP1 3SE shared the million pound kitty. They were the winners of the competition company’s weekly Millionaire Street prize today. Every ticket was worth £76,923, but two players tripled their prizes to £230,769 with three tickets each, the lottery revealed.

Terry told the Postcode lottery that he would use the money to help out his family and also travel with his wife Jacqui. He added: “We’ve got a daughter, son and two granddaughters. We’ll give some money to them.

“My daughter seems to think we’ll be taking them on holiday to Disney in Florida. We’ll see…we’ll maybe go to Paris. I took retirement at the beginning of last year. We want to do a bit of travelling. My brother-in-law and sister-in-law live in Canada and do lots of cruising, so we may do some of that next year.”

He won alongside his neighbour Alison Rose, 52. She said: “I’ve been playing for 10 years more than my neighbour, but it feels good that we can share this. They’re lovely people, the neighbours. Everyone round here is lovely. We’re quite a close community.”

Alison, who works as a legal PA, was nursing a bad cold when the Postcode Lottery team were in town but told them she would like to travel with her partner after the jackpot win.

She added: “It feels slightly unreal holding a cheque for this amount. I think we’ll have a holiday. Maybe a safari or Australia. My brother lives in Melbourne and it’s been five years since we last went over.”

Just along the street, Sharon Chambers, 39, and partner Ben Rigby won over £75,000 and have always dreamed of taking their two daughters, aged 11 and five, on a trip across Japan – including stops at the country’s Disney and Super Nintendo World theme parks.

And keen runner Ben hopes the win may also help him fulfil an ambition to complete the world’s seven major marathons – Tokyo, New York, Chicago, Boston and Berlin – after already doing London and Paris.

Sharon said: “This will help with that. We want to go to Tokyo. Ben does marathons and he’s hoping to do the Tokyo marathon.

“We’ll probably spend it on going to Japan with the kids and take them to Disney and Super Nintendo World. It’ll be a once-in-a-lifetime trip away. We’ll make it amazing for them, which is good.”