First time lucky for £1m lottery winner Jodie
It proved to be first time lucky for Jodie Scullion when she played the National Lottery – her first attempt at an online game saw her win a cool £1 million.
Jodie, a 22-year-old mortgage underwriter from Birmingham, became an instant millionaire after playing the Run For Your Money game while on a family holiday.
Jodie, who lives in Northfield with parents John and Karen, said she would use the money to buy her first home.
“I can’t believe I won the first time I played this game," she said.
"It’s unbelievable, it will set me up for life, I can help my parents who have always looked after me and treat myself.
"As someone who works with mortgages it’s unreal that I’m going to buy my own house without a loan. For someone my age, that is incredible.”
Jodie decided to play the game while sitting in her caravan in the rain during a family holiday in Burnham-on-Sea, Somerset.
Jodie, who works for a bank in Birmingham, said she had recently bought a caravan at the Brean Sands site, where her family also have caravans.
"We were down there for the last break of the year before it closed for the winter," she said.
"It wasn’t great weather and I was a bit bored, sitting alone in my caravan, so I decided to put £10 on to my National Lottery account to play one of the games."
Believing she had won, Jodie rushed over to her parents' caravan next-door to make sure.
“I looked at my phone, then looked again and thought this can’t be right so I went to Mum and Dad to ask their advice.
“Dad checked it, checked it again and after the third check told me to stay calm. I then phoned the National Lottery to check if I had won. By this time two of my sisters had appeared to see what was going on.
“Dad told everyone to keep calm as I was on the phone because he knew that the whole family would start screaming and crying all at the same time if I actually had won £1 million – and we did.”
As well as buying the house, she was also going to buy her caravan outright, treat her family, and then look at holidays.
Jodie was unveiled as the latest millionaire from Britain's luckiest postcode area at a presentation ceremony in Birmingham yesterday.
There were 168 lottery millionaires in the B postcode district up until the end of September, and the area also holds the top spot for the number of prizes of £50,000 or more since the lottery began 25 years ago this month.
Since the first draw on November 19, 1994, The National Lottery has created more than 5,500 millionaires .
