Mum felt lucky ... and scooped £61m jackpot

The five-strong syndicate made up of Stephanie Davies, 23, her boyfriend Steve Powell, 30, her sister Courtney, 19, their mum Sonia, 53, and Sonia’s partner Keith Reynolds, 55, from Monmouth, hit the jackpot on Friday, July 29.

And Stephanie only purchased the six Lucky Dip tickets after receiving a call from her mother late on Friday evening.

Mrs Davies pleaded with her daughter to buy the tickets as she was feeling lucky.

“I thought mum was mad calling me from holiday but they were so insistent I knew we had to do it,” she said yesterday as they celebrated their £61,102,442.90 win.

Mrs Davies was celebrating after successful keyhole surgery in the US to remove a tumour on her parathyroid gland.

Miss Davies bought the tickets from the Overmonow Garage in Monmouth and was stunned when she checked the numbers in the early hours of Sunday morning.

Describing her dash to get the tickets, Miss Davies said: “My car was blocked in the drive by my boyfriend Steve’s, so to save time I made him drive me to buy a ticket instead of moving mine.”

Her mother, an admin assistant, and Mr Reynolds, a regional director, were in Florida to see his daughter graduate and for the surgery.

Earlier this year Ms Davies was diagnosed with the tumour and found a world-leading treatment centre near where they were on holiday so she could have keyhole surgery there.

“I had my operation on Wednesday and until then, we didn’t know how serious it was,” she said.

“They told me that if it hadn’t been removed it would have been fatal – at the very least I would have lost my voice within a year.

“They managed to give me the all-clear straight after the operation, so as you would imagine, we were on cloud nine.”