John and Alison Doherty won the £14.6m top prize in a lottery draw in
Scotland on July 2. Alison had let a customer go ahead of her in the
queue at their local convenience store and then decided to follow suit
when the other customer bought a lucky dip ticket. After she realized
she was the winner, she called her husband home immediately.
However, instead
of heading straight to claim their winnings, they hid their winning slip
under a lantern + a photocopy at home because they had a holiday booked
for themselves and their two kids in Florida. It was when they returned
two weeks after that they got the ticket validated.
Although the
couple are now over £14m richer, John Doherty has returned back to work
for his JDPS plumbing and heating engineer firm which he set up in
1984. According to him, he doesn’t want to let down his loyal customers
and would be bored sitting at home.
Stepping out in his black overalls
and jumping into his black Mercedes van to service a boiler he’d fitted,
he said,
“I really enjoy my work – I’ve been doing it a long time. I
want to stay grounded. I’ve got a lot of loyal customers and I don’t
want to let them down. My customers are older people and they’ve treated
me just the same after the win which is what I want. I’m doing stuff
that was arranged before all this happened. I can’t imagine sitting in
the family home all day. You’d be bored not working. So I’m just
carrying on. I’m just back off two holidays so I definitely don’t think I
should be sitting on a beach. I will treat myself – but once it’s all
settled down a bit”
