Winners and losers
Viv Nicholson, the 25-year-old housewife who won £152,000 on the pools in 1961 (more than £3 million by today's standards), famously vowed she would "spend, spend, spend" until the money had gone. Spend she did - on a big bungalow and new cars every six months - and within a decade she was declared bankrupt. She is now a hairdresser in her home of Castleford, West Yorkshire.
Britain's biggest lottery winners were Mark Gardiner, 33, and Paul Maddison, 43, of Hastings, East Sussex, who scooped a jackpot of £22,590,829 in June 1995. The business partners are no longer on speaking terms. Maddison has split up with his third wife and lives in a mansion in Scotland.
In 2002, Michael Carroll, 19, of King's Lynn, Norfolk, bagged 9.7 million. He has since spent a large percentage of his cash on jewellery, drugs parties and firework displays for friends, and on a £325,000 nasion in Swaffham complete with a 24-hour banger car racing track in the garden.
Mukhtar Mohidin, from Blackburn, won £17.9 million in December, 1994. He tried unsuccessfully to remain anonymous but was racked with guilt because of his Muslim faith, which forbids gambling. A year later he and his wife Sayeeda sued each other and they were divorced in 1998 after 17 years of marriage.
Dean Allen, 26, became one of Britain's most eligible bachelors when he scooped £13.8 million in August 2000. One of his first purchases was a Porsche to replace his Ford Fiesta, and a mansion in Essex for him and his girlfriend. More surprisingly, he bought the house next door for his mum and one on the other side for his future mother-in-law.
Ray and Barbara Ragg, from Sheffield, won £7.6 million in January 2000 and gave £5 million of it away to charitable causes, friends and relatives. The couple still live in their home town and take hundreds of schoolchildren to the pantomime every Christmas. They continue to play the lottery and hope for another big win, which they say they would give to people who need it. Michelle Byrne.