Lottery jackpot for supermarket assistant

IT HAS taken Sandra Fosbrooke several days of extreme pampering to come to terms with her £ 12.8m lottery win. The 48-year-old supermarket assistant almost fainted when her partner called at the store where she was working at a till to break the news.

'I had to go home for a lie down,' she said yesterday. Since then, the couple have hidden themselves away in a luxury hotel as they contemplate a whole new way of life.

Mrs Fosbrooke, who is confident she will not be returning to her £5.44-an-hour job, said yesterday that they are planning to buy a villa in Spain, a new house in their village of Furnace, near Llanelli, West Wales, and a car each.

The couple scooped the Lotto Extra jackpot on Saturday with the numbers 5, 7, 9, 12, 18 and 39 with a ticket from the Asda store where Mrs Fosbrooke worked. But her partner, Ken Henry, 52, did not check their numbers until the following morning. The factory machine inspector then jumped in his car and drove to the store to break the news.

At first Mrs Fosbrooke thought he was joking and said yesterday: 'I just didn't believe it and in some ways I still don't. I didn't believe what he was saying and told him to go away because I had customers to serve.

'But he kept on repeating we had won so I fed the ticket through one of the machines to confirm it. I had to go home and lie down, it was all too much. The phone was going all the time so we decided to go and stay in a hotel. We had to get away because you can't keep a secret in Llanelli.'

Mr Henry said he broke down in tears when he was hit by the realisation that he was rich beyond his wildest dreams. He said he had stopped playing the lottery a long time ago because the chances of winning are so small. But on Saturday he decided to have a go 'on a whim'.

He said: 'I don't know why but I was feeling lucky and I asked Sandra to get two Lotto Extra tickets. We won £10 in the Lotto draw with one ticket and then went out on Saturday night to have a few drinks with our winnings.

'The next morning Sandra gave me a list of household chores to do while she was out and half way through I realised I hadn't checked our Lotto Extra numbers. When I saw we had the winner I drove straight to Asda, went up to Sandra at her checkout and whispered in her ear, 'This is going to change your life - we've won £12.8m on the lottery'.'

The couple have been together for seven years and both have two children from previous marriages. One of the first items on Mr Henry's shopping list was an executive box at Liverpool's home ground Anfield. But he has been told that even multi-millionaires have to wait for space at the new Champions League winners.