120,000 lotto win for wife who walked 1½ miles to buy husband beer
Published: November 11, 2005
A WOMAN walked a mile and a half to get her husband a beer - and bought a last-minute lottery ticket that won the couple nearly £120,000.
Doreen Broll, 36, was settling in to watch The X Factor last Saturday night when her husband Andrew, 36, asked her to go to the shop to get him a pack of Tennents lager.
The couple, of Whithorn, Wigtownshire, have a car, but Mrs Broll does not drive, so she walked nearly a mile in wintry weather to the Costcutters store. The mother of two, who works in a fish-processing plant, does not even like beer - and did not buy anything for herself.
She returned home in time for the draw, but was in the kitchen when her husband discovered that the ticket she had bought matched five numbers and the bonus ball.
Mr Broll said: “I had kicked off my shoes and I was settling in to watch The X Factor and I thought, ‘I’d really love a beer’. But I couldn’t be bothered to get the car out, so I asked Doreen to go for me. Before she left, I jotted down some numbers off the top of my head for the lottery.”
His wife said: “The things I do for him.”
She went on: “I’m glad I went now. I wasn’t going to go, but then I thought, ‘Oh well, I might as well’.
“It was cold and starting to rain, and there’s a big hill you have to get up on the way back. But, as I’ve been saying all week, if I’d not gone for the beer, I wouldn’t be drinking champagne now.”
The couple were born and raised in the small coastal community of Whithorn and met when they were 15. Mr Broll said the unexpected windfall had reaffirmed the couple’s love.
“Everybody’s been saying to me that she must be a good wife to go and do that for me. This is about five years’ worth of wages for both of us. The whole thing hasn’t sunk in. But when it does, I am taking her away on holiday. She really deserves it.”
Jillian Bell, the manager of the shop where the ticket was bought, said the town has been celebrating the couple’s success.
“It’s just a wee town here and everybody knows everybody,” she said. “Doreen is in every day. They are both hard-working and it’s lovely to see someone in this area getting a nice amount of money, especially before Christmas. It’s certainly helped our business as everyone’s coming in hoping to get more lucky numbers.”
The couple visited the bank yesterday to begin discussing what to do with their winnings. Mr Broll plans to buy a new car to replace his Vauxhall Astra, and the couple will buy their son Andrew, 15, a quad bike. Their daughter Joanne, 13, has asked for a family holiday to Tenerife in the spring.
Mrs Broll still has not decided what she wants to buy with the winnings. She said: “I might get driving lessons, but I don’t think Andrew trusts me with the car. Mind you, he’ll have to now I’ve won him all that money.”
The winning Lotto numbers on last Saturday were 12, 13, 21, 26, 32 and 39, and the bonus ball was 17. The Brolls matched all these numbers except 13.
The story of Mrs Broll’s success is in contrast to the tale behind the winner of this year’s largest Lotto prize.
An act of old-fashioned good manners paved the way for Irish woman Dolores McNamara’s historic £80 million win in the EuroMillions draw in August.
She was standing in line at a shop when she began chatting to a 52-year-old man ahead of her in the queue. He let her go first and the machine gave her a “lucky dip” ticket.
Had he not let Ms McNamara ahead of him, the man would have won the jackpot himself.
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