Perspectives

EuroMillions winners plan to buy new carpet with £41m jackpot:

Gareth and Catherine Bull, from Mansfield in Nottinghamshire, won £40,627,241 with lucky dip ticket

A self-employed builder and his wife who won a lottery jackpot of nearly £41m plan to splash out on an executive box at Manchester United – and a new carpet.

Gareth and Catherine Bull banked £40,627,241 after matching the numbers from a lucky dip ticket on the EuroMillions draw on 20 January.

Mr Bull, 40, bought the ticket on a whim after he was unable to start work one day because it was raining.

The couple, from Mansfield in Nottinghamshire, said they wanted to take their two sons to Disneyland, Florida, but the most pressing matter on 35-year-old Mrs Bull’s mind was the carpet on their landing.

Explaining how she would spend the jackpot, she told a press conference at Nottingham’s Eastwood Hall: “I did say a carpet for my landing because it’s terrible. Nobody’s allowed upstairs.

“It bothers me. I get to the top of the stairs every day and I’m like: ‘I hate that carpet.'”

Mrs Bull said of the moment they realised they had won: “You’re rubbing your eyes, you’re looking at the numbers and you’re trying to comprehend things. Thinking it must be four million maybe and they’ve got the dots and the dashes in the wrong places – there’s got to be some pence somewhere.”

They said they put the win to the back of their minds at first because they had to take their sons, aged nine and 10, to a football match, had a children’s sleepover planned and had friends coming round in the evening.

Mr Bull, who works with a team of two or three other builders, said they did not plan to leave Mansfield or buy a glamorous mansion.

“All of this has happened at a crazy fast speed since Saturday and it is hard to keep up,” he said. “We have our dream home which we built from scratch and it is impossible to think about what we are going to do next yet.

“We have only told a few people so far so it will be exciting to sit down together as a family and work out plans for the future.”

Mr Bull said he would like splash out on a box at Old Trafford to watch Manchester United. His wife, who works in health insurance, said she might go back to work. “I’ll go out of my mind at home,” she said.

http://www.pcworld.com/article/248552/petition_seeks_probe_of_mpaa_bribery_over_sopa.html