A GOBSMACKED woman captured the moment of complete shock when she discovered she had won £10k every month for the next 30 years.
The video catches the complete surprise of Laura Hoyle from Nottingham ringing the National Lottery Line to confirm her whopping win.
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The 40-year-old matched all five main numbers and the Life Ball to win the top prize of the Set For Life draw at the start of March last year during the height of the third Covid lockdown.
Her husband Kirk Stevens, 38, filmed the phone call that changed Laura’s life.
In the clip, Laura looks at Kirk in sheer shock before standing in disbelief.
She covered her mouth with her hand then said “You’re joking, you’re absolutely joking”.
A year later, Laura said: “I was physically shaking as I told the lady, ‘I think I’ve won the lottery!’
“It was so weird saying those words! I kept thinking this must be a joke; it can’t be happening to us!
“And the ridiculous part was that, as I waited for Camelot to call me back, I still had to join work meetings online. I could hardly speak, let alone make any sense!”
Lucky winner Laura soon ditched her day job to pursue her passion of ghost hunting with Kirk.
She said: “Kirk and I are participating in lots more paranormal activities and I’m editing the videos we take which I absolutely love doing.
“I’m getting better and better at editing and the other month one of our videos was voted by a top ghost hunting YouTuber, one of his videos of the week.
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“It’s as if I’m getting paid to video edit, for the next 30 years!
“Without the win we wouldn’t have been able to tick off a huge bucket list item – visit the National Justice Museum in Nottingham out-of-hours and spend time there investigating.
“There have been many trips and there will be many more.”
Husband Kirk, a manufacturing engineer, has also been able to pay for his Master’s degree and the couple has bought a house with the winnings.
Laura said: “It still hasn’t really sunk in. I say that, yet I immediately quit my job and I’m doing stuff I normally wouldn’t have been able to do. I guess it’s all still surreal.
“I am so chilled about everything now, very relaxed and that is what the win has done for me.
“We are moving into a new house in April and it’s so stress free because I don’t work now.
“We’ve been fortunate during Covid to go away, and once Kirk has finished his Master degree in the summer we are off to Disneyland Paris and lots of other exciting places.”
Winning Set For Life has given us the best of both worlds.
Kirk Stevens
Kirk added: “I’m in my last year of my Master’s degree in mechanical engineering.
“It’s been really hard at times to distance learn during Covid and it’s an expensive qualification and before the win I did, at times, question the investment.
“As Laura said, the win has enabled us to relax about bills. I have used the winnings to pay for the course.
“I want to continue working and progress which was the reason for the Masters.”
Kirk is even planning to create a new business using his talent as a highly-skilled carpenter.
He said: “I want to make paranormal investigation products using my woodwork and electronic skills.
“I know what people want, I have the skill set and I now have the opportunity to make it work.
“Winning Set For Life has given us the best of both worlds.
“We are doing what we want to do and because we have this money every month, for life we are so chilled and relaxed about things, enabling us to keep our feet firmly on the ground.”
Laura said it took her almost two weeks for the news of her new fortune to sink in – she originally thought she had just won a fiver.
It even took her three attempts to tell her mum that she’d scooped the draw-dropping prize because she kept hanging up in disbelief.
Laura said: “I got an alert just after the draw saying there was ‘good news about my ticket’ but I just assumed I had won a fiver.
“I even kept on playing for several more Set For Life draws before I got an email from The National Lottery requesting I log into my account and check my messages.
“I thought that was odd and even asked Kirk whether he thought it was real or not.
“It was a Friday afternoon, I was working from home and I finally checked my account and saw there were lots of notifications there.
“It was then that the penny finally dropped that we should call Camelot fast!”
She added: “By the end of Friday evening, we had finished off four bottles of Prosecco.
“Kirk fell fast asleep, but my mind was racing, and I stayed awake all night.
“The only thing I could do was to watch movies, so I stayed up and watched the complete Divergent series, which helped pass six hours at least!”
Laura and Kirk are just themselves and the beauty of their winning moment is that it was captured on camera!
Andy Carter
Camelot’s Andy Carter, Senior Winners’ Advisor at The National Lottery, said, “I’ve seen every type of emotion when delivering the big news.
“Tears, laughter, screaming, absolute silence and total disbelief – just like Laura’s reaction.”
“Some put on their posh ‘telephone voice’, while others like Laura and Kirk are just themselves and the beauty of their winning moment is that it was captured on camera!”
Laura and Kirk played Set For Life since the game started in 2019.
They bought their winning Set For Life Lucky Dip ticket online via the National Lottery app.
To play, you pick five main numbers from 1 to 47, and one ‘Life Ball’ from 1 to 10, for the chance to win fixed prizes – with everything from Laura’s 30-year prize, to the 2nd prize of a monthly £10k for one year, and £5 for matching just two main numbers.
The Set For Life game costs £1.50 per line and is drawn every Monday and Thursday.
Lottery players to date have raised over £45BN for National Lottery Good Causes, with more than 660,000 individual grants awarded.
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