Lottery winners want car, house – and new knees

Jul 25 2007 by Liam Murphy, Liverpool Daily Post

IF their numbers had come up just a week earlier, Wirral’s newest millionaires would have been heading to Scotland to watch the Open championship at Carnoustie.

But retired couple Tony and Greta Dodd were last night still trying to come to terms with winning £2.4m on the lottery.

Top of the couple’s priorities now is new knees as both have been waiting for operations on the NHS for surgery to repair their painful joints.

Keen golfer Mr Dodd, 67, said he had been unable to play his favourite game since last November because of the pain in both knees and his wife, Greta, 69, said she also needed one of her knee joints replaced.

Now Mr Dodd, who had played at Carnoustie some years ago, plans to try out more golf courses around the world.

“There are a lot of golf courses for him to try and places for me to visit while he is playing golf,” said Mrs Dodd.

Mr Dodd said he had not realised he had suddenly become so wealthy until he remembered to check his lottery tickets on Monday.

He and his wife had been to visit their daughter, Jane, who lives in Heswall on Monday morning and checked their numbers on Teletext when they got home around midday.

At first, he thought he had won £46 with four numbers, then he thought it was five numbers before the realisation sank in he had matched six and scooped the jackpot. Mr Dodd said: “I was walking in a circle around the kitchen, then I rang my daughter and sang Who Wants to be a Millionaire?”

The couple’s only child, daughter Jane Mountfield, 42, said she did not believe it at first because her father has a reputation as “a bit of a joker”.

At a press conference at Thornton Hall Hotel in south Wirral, Mrs Mountfield said: “I don’t think I believed it until it went through the machine and was confirmed by the lottery people.

“When he phoned me, it was just unbelievable. Unless it happened to you, you can’t imagine what it is to take it in. You don’t even think about spending it.”

The family went out to their local pub, The Queens in Liscard, to celebrate on Monday night and it seemed news had got around.

Mrs Dodd said: “We could have carried on drinking all night – it seemed to have no effect.”

Now the couple, who live in a semi-detached home in Wallasey, have said they want to take their time over how they will spend the windfall, although first on their list is a call to a private surgeon to carry out the essential knee operations.

Mr Dodd said: “We will have a couple of days settling down and then see what we can do about the operations.

“We haven’t really thought about how we are going to celebrate but it’s a wonderful feeling knowing that we can do what we want whenever we want.”

Among their early plans are a party for their friends, to buy a new house and a new car.

The winning ticket, which was a regular selection of numbers using birthdays and house numbers, was bought at Kullar Newsagents in Belvedere Road, Wallasey.

The winning numbers were 3, 10, 21, 25, 29 and 49.

liammurphy