Timothy Schultz:

Elaine Thompson:

I'm brilliant, thank you.

Timothy Schultz:

Elaine Thompson:

It was.

Timothy Schultz:

So what exactly did you win and how did it happen?

Elaine Thompson:

It started on our, it was our 17th wedding anniversary and my husband, his first love is football, Newcastle United, they were playing that day and I sent him on a train down to London, bearing in mind it was our anniversary. And the last thing he said was, don't forget to put the lottery on and use the same shop we always use. So I sent him off, got in the car and thought, nah, I'm not gonna use the shop, I'm gonna go somewhere else. So I went somewhere else, bought the tickets and took them home and never thought about it until the draw came up that night. And when I got, when the numbers came up on the TV, when daddy wasn't there, the children, it was their night. They could have pop, they could have their soda, sweeties, whatever they wanted. It was their day when daddy was not there. And we were curled up on the settee and the numbers came up. And I said to the children, those numbers look familiar. And my daughter said, have we won 10 pound again, mum? And I said, it might be a little bit more. And then the line matched my very first line and that's when it all broke loose. I called my mother-in-law and she screamed and put the home phone down. I called me sister-in law who said, I've not won the lottery before so I wouldn't know what to do. And then I called by other friend and said, I'm really busy, so I'll call you back. Nobody to talk to. I didn't know what to do. And the neighbors came and sat me down and said you've got to ring Camelot at the time. It's now Allwyn, but we had to ring Camelot and the phone was engaged and I thought well we might be back to a tenner now but we eventually got through and there's a winners advisor that talks to you and talks you right through everything from day one onwards. We had a huge party as well. Without Derek!

Timothy Schultz:

Oh my gosh, well that sounds incredible. What exactly were you feeling when you saw the numbers come up on the TV?

Elaine Thompson:

Thinking it could be eight million because that's how much it was that night and thinking, oh my goodness, our lives are about to change. And the very first thought was, where's Derek? I need to tell him. But he didn't find out until four o'clock the next morning when he came home off the gravy train. It was really hard to take in that night. Once Derek was there, and once the winner's advisor turned up and kind of brought us back to normality saying that you can either go public or you can stay quiet. We decided to go public. I mean half the street was in my house that night, so for somebody who was going to... At the time we won newspapers would pay people to give the name of a winner. And I thought, well one of the neighbors got some money. So that's why we went public. I just want everybody to know that it's really, we've done something really good. We've won the lottery and we were gonna change a lot of lives.

Timothy Schultz:

Wow. And when you did go public, what was the reaction to your friends and family and to the general public? Because you mentioned that you had a presser or you went and you had a party and what, how did people react?

Elaine Thompson:

Most of them, I don't think we've had any negativity. Even Derek saying no, aren't you? Anyway, I can't remember any negativity at all. Everybody was positive with us. It was very close to Christmas, it was on our anniversary, and we made sure our neighbor's children got gifts, and then we took the adults out for meals. But the main thing was, we knew our children's, we had two young children, we knew that they... their future was secure. You know, it's one of those things, you look at your children and think, you want to send them to university, you want them to have a really good education, have a real lovely house and have a fantastic life. But when they're that small and you're working hard to pay the mortgage and everything and then this win comes along, you know that the children are going to be fine. The single best thing I always say is for that one pound that I paid for my lottery is that my children can go through to university without owing a penny at the end of it and getting good jobs. That's the single best thing that that lottery did for me.

Timothy Schultz:

That's, yeah, incredible. I imagine that, yeah that is just incredible. And I want to ask a little bit more about this, but before I get to that, so you told someone a week, I was reading this, a week before the drawing that you would win exactly 2.7 million pounds.

Elaine Thompson:

My Derek was working. Derek worked at Motorola. He was on the very start of the mobile phones coming out. His company he worked for. There was only six of them then. But we were at a dinner dance and I was sat right next to Mr Boring. I mean, come on, you've got to have a dinner dance. I mean, you couldn't even, I just said to Derek, let's get the lottery tickets and check them. And this guy said to me, oh, you don't play the lottery? I said, yes, I do. I bet on horses, I go to the bingo, I'll do anything. And I won't be greedy, I will win the lottery one week. I won't be greedy. 2.7 million will do me. And the following Saturday on our 17th wedding anniversary, we won £2.7 million.

Timothy Schultz:

I mean, first of all, that seems like it's meant to be. I don't know what you think about that, but that's serendipity. How do you, in retrospect, looking back now, how do you explain this type of thing? Do you believe that it was your intuition? Do you believe that it was your faith that it might, that it was going to happen, or manifestation, or just fate, or?

Elaine Thompson:

It was just a quip, you know, you just tried to put this guy there to, you know, that, that I was going to win. And it was just one of those figuring, you know, these, you think, well, one day I'll win. Everybody says that. I had no idea I was going to win the following Saturday. And I was, I had no idea it was going be the amount I said, it's just one of those things that comes off your tongue, you know? Way back in 30 years ago, you never had hundreds of millions of pounds in the lottery. It was always around that area. So, I mean, there was no faith, there was no destiny, there was no nothing like that. It was just a figure came to my head and I just said it.

Timothy Schultz:

Did you know it was 2.7 million when you said that?

Elaine Thompson:

No, I didn't. It was actually eight million that night and there was some other winners who didn't come forward as, I can't get the word out now, they didn't come forward, they stayed quiet. Yeah, but we shared, I got a share of eight million.

Timothy Schultz:

Elaine Thompson:

Even my husband, when he realized, it's what I said the week before, he thought it's just unbelievable. I think it was just one of those things that it was meant to be. I've always been a very positive person. You see a lot of sadness in your life. I don't take anything badly. I'm always seeing the good side of everybody until I find out for sure. So I'm kind of a positive, all the time person, maybe too much, but I am.

Timothy Schultz:

Well, speaking of positivity, I mean, you have done some incredible things, helping people with cancer. And also, you're really into horses, I understand. So what have you done, exactly, since the win? Because you also even went back to work, working at 2 AM, I was reading, at one point, for a while. So what have you done since the win? Why did you continue to work?

Elaine Thompson:

I gave up work for a little while to spend some time with the children and sort everything out. Obviously we moved house. We waited a year before we did anything big and we decided we always wanted to run a bed and breakfast when we were very first married, but winning the lottery kind of increased that so we bought a farm that had been converted into holiday cottages, which was a two-star one, and we wanted to make that up to five stars. Eight months later, we bought it. Six months after that, it was five star. And we ran that and we found in the winter that we had empty cottages obviously because it gets very cold and some empty cottagers in the spring just before the Easter holidays. So I was invited into Number 10 Downing Street and they wanted me and I walked through those gates without getting arrested. It was unbelievable. Walking into Number 10 and they were trying to have donations for charitable places. I decided that rather than give them a lump sum, we would do our own. So we took children and families with cancer and gave them free weeks on the holiday cottages and that was the profound thing for my children. I wanted them to learn that they've been lucky and everything is probably going to come to them. But some of these children aren't going to survive. So it was important that my children learned just because they're lucky doesn't mean to say that everybody is. And it was wonderful to see them playing together and these children, some of them hadn't even seen a horse, a real horse or sheep. It was fascinating to actually see them. And the most of it was spending time with the parents, letting them just relax. We banned all doctors, all nurses. It was pure fun while they were there, unless it was needed. And I think that was fantastic. But sadly, my brother, when we were there, we gave him a million pound when we won. He broke me up. So he sadly passed away and there was too many memories. So we sold that and bought a restaurant in Lake Regis in a very small town and we took on 52 staffs that we'd never ever done before. We ran that successfully as well. So yeah, we've done quite a lot. Now we're retired. But working, I love to work. I can't be in the house 10 hours, 12 hours a day. It drives me insane. I mean, I'm nearly 70 now, so I had to retire. There has to be a time when you've got to stop. But I still miss work. And I worked for 50 years. I'd go back if I could.

Timothy Schultz:

When you win a major lottery prize for some people, it seems like you still need to have a purpose and something that drives you because at the end of the day, did you have to do any introspective thinking about what makes you happy and what you should be doing when you don't necessarily have to be doing a job you don't want to or? Were you thinking about that?

Elaine Thompson:

My philosophy is you go to bed with a smile, you get up with a smile, whatever happens through the day happens, you can't, you can't change that. So I'm a very in your face, bouncy person. There are times when they don't, Derek will probably say that I'm not that bouncy sometimes, but you've got to be happy through your day, because being miserable is not going to get you anywhere, is it? I just don't I don't deal with too many miserable people. I just like it to be happy and fun. Derek's just whispered to me, it's nice to have a purpose in life. I have, I've got him.

Timothy Schultz:

Yes that that is beautiful. Looking back 30 years later what would you say is the the biggest blessing of your win because this is a major, major win. I believe the lottery started not too far before, at least this particular lottery.

Elaine Thompson:

I think it was about week 53. I think we won in week 53, it's around that time. The major thing is my children have gone through university. They're all on the housing, they've all got houses. They're increasing them every time. They're happy they've got children, I've got grandchildren. It's just, we've just had an extraordinary life. The things that I have done are extraordinary. I mean, who would have thought a little girl from Wallsend, it's a very small place, walking through the doors of Number 10. Never in a million years I would have dreamed that I'd do that. I've been on Concorde with stars. I was in the front watching Mach when it hit the Mach 3. I've been in Donald Trump's apartments. I shouldn't really say it like that, should I? But yes, I have. I was invited to go and I went into his jewelers and I have $10 million worth of diamonds on me, armed guards behind, just to show people that when Concorde was around, you could fly to New York and come back in a day. The single things that I love the most are the charitable ones. I love going out. I mean we did the mistletoe millionaires, we took some very sick children to Lapland and had two or three days there. That was profound for me, it was lovely. We've done quite a lot and it's not just me and Derek that do it. There's hundreds of lottery winners that get involved in quite a lots of charitable days. We do gardening, we do painting, we turn up, we go into hospices. Everything. And that there are favorite days we do beach cleans. We walk along with some fantastic beaches in the UK cleaning up. During that time, we have fun, but it's helping all the time. It's not...The things and the holidays that we can do and places we can go, yeah we can do that. We could have done that if we were working. The charitable days are to me the best thing we can do. And I love to be in them.

Timothy Schultz:

That is wonderful. And you mentioned with other lottery winners, is that something that's organized through Allwyn?

Elaine Thompson:

Allwyn, yeah. It's, we started off when it was Camelot. We did, I mean, I've been everywhere, right across the country. Gardens, painting, digging, everywhere. And I've loved every single minute of it. And the beauty of it is, you get to meet the lottery winners, the other lottery winners that have gone public. And there's a lot of friendships formed by that. And meeting them and doing them and doing this together, you get to talk about things that have happened in their lives. And we can say, oh well that happened to me and this is what we did. And you know, it's fantastic that we can meet all of the other winners. And from from 30 years ago I know quite a few now. And it's the the best thing is that is charity days that we get to meet and just have coffee and do things.

Timothy Schultz:

Yeah, that is beautiful. And that is a lot of luck, a lot of lucky people in a similar place. That is amazing. What a blessing. It sounds like it's been very wonderful and such a blessing for you. What advice would you give to someone who is playing the lottery hoping to win? Do you have any hot tips?

Elaine Thompson:

Winning the lottery is by chance so you can't you can really predict, but if you do win the decisions you make on the day are completely different two weeks down the line. So we always say take at least a month before you make any decisions on what you're going to do where you're gonna go, whatever. So the thing is, you can't really... Well, I did predict, but you can't really predict. I'm kind a bit seeing I'm a liar here. But you can't, it's a game of chance.

Timothy Schultz:

Do you think that the lottery changed who you are, or did it give you more room to be yourself? Because I've noticed with myself and many people that I've met that it's sort of magnified personalities. But have you found that to be for yourself, or what is your thoughts?

Elaine Thompson:

It hasn't changed me at all. I'm not changed for anybody. So, no, I wouldn't change for anything. So, it's probably sort of faced me with the things that we've done. I mean, I've got a folder that's almost 70 pages full of everything that we've done. We've done the lottery all over the world. We've done the Italian lottery. We've done the Missouri Lottery, we've done Norwegian, there's another one, isn't there, South Africa. So it's kind of gone all over. The Italian was a bit scary because when we left, they were all banging on the car as we left. And they said, whatever you do, don't open the windows because they're pretty fanatic and they ran after the car quite a way. So yeah, it's the experiences that you get. I've got multiple experiences, multiple, multiple experiences. It's just been an incredible life.

Timothy Schultz:

Well, first of all, these different lotteries that you've been on, were you actually in the show when you say that you did these lotteries? Were you there in the show?

Elaine Thompson:

The two that we were at were the Missouri Lottery. We were on that show. And on the Italian Lottery, yes, we were on that show. And it's a 7 hour show that draw one ball an hour. And it was all in Italian. We drew the very last one. They called us down and the gentleman that was sat next to me when he realized I was a lottery winner nearly had a heart attack. He gave me a kiss. He cuddled me. He wouldn't let me go. And then we went down and drew the last ball. And the week before, the star of the show was Madonna. The week after was me and Derek. So yes, some things are quite surreal.

Timothy Schultz:

That is very surreal and that particular show, I was actually on it years ago and had the similar experience of going out in a limousine and people banging on the windows and it seemed like it was almost like you're, I don't know how it felt to you, but for me, it felt like almost like I was an overnight celebrity or something from this sudden brush with luck.

Elaine Thompson:

They sent us to a restaurant after that and we went into this restaurant and the owner come out and said, that menu is no good for you, this is your menu and then I can't even remember leaving the place. But it was fantastic and he wouldn't take any money, it was just brilliant, it was a fantastic, surreal experience.

Timothy Schultz:

Well, it sounds like this lottery win has been such a blessing. You've done so many wonderful things and we are limited on time, but I do want to ask real quickly, you've been to every horse track race, I was reading this, in the country, or in UK at least, I believe.

Elaine Thompson:

49 courses. It was about 10,000 miles we've done. It's fantastic and we owned a horse. Well, we've owned a couple of horses. Three. One of them was nicknamed Sick Note because every time we got him to ready to race, he knew, we knew, we thought he was psychic this horse because when he was getting ready to race, he'd go and the trainer would say sorry you can't run. So we nicknamed him Sick Note. But we did once win a race and we've got a trophy for it, which is fantastic. We still go horse racing now. As soon as we get a chance we go off and go.

Timothy Schultz:

You had a race named after you as well, or a trophy or something. You had something that was very important named after you.

Elaine Thompson: It was, it was, um... We were on the front page of the booklet where it gives you all of the races and all of the horses. We got to pick out the best turned out horse, which happened to be, which we didn't know an actual local Ludlow girl, and we gave the prize to the winning jockey of our race. And then we got invited into the inner sanctum where you never, nobody ever goes. And had some champagne with the owners! Best day ever! Have you been to England?

Timothy Schultz:

Not well just no through some airports, but not yet. I want to. I will, yes. I'm disappointed

Elaine Thompson:

If you come, let us know, we'll take you racing.

Timothy Schultz:

Oh, I would love to, I'd love to and listening to your story and like a fly on the wall listening to you, all these stories, it's so incredible. It seems like the lottery has been such a blessing and all of these experiences. Is there anything else that you wanted to say about your experience today that I don't know enough to ask or that you just want to say?

Elaine Thompson:

Well, first of all, thank Allwyn for doing this, so that I could talk to you. Secondly, just thank the lottery for the experiences that Derek and I have done. I've done quite a lot. It's got to be two, three hundred, easy. We are so grateful for our lives and what happened to us 30 years ago and this year it's our 30th anniversary and it's our 47th wedding anniversary on the same day, so we've been together 50 years Derek and I since he was 17. So yeah, we've had a remarkable world or life. We've been remarkably lucky.

Timothy Schultz:

Wow, well congratulations, happy anniversary coming up. I mean, that's incredible.

Elaine Thompson:

But thank you for talking to me.

Timothy Schultz:

Yeah, thank you so much for taking the time, Elaine. Your story is beautiful, it's so positive, and I love your mindset and what you have done as well over the years, so it's such a pleasure. Thank you so for your time today.

Elaine Thompson:

Thank you. No problem. I've loved it.

Timothy Schultz:

Excellent. Well, thank you very much.