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Daily Mirror
Daily Mirror
Entertainment
Molly Pike

Lottery winner explains why she has given away over half of her £115million winnings

A lottery winner gave away over half of her £115million winnings to charity and her friends and family.

Frances Connolly and her husband Patrick scooped £114.9million on the New Year's Day draw in 2019.

She gave away some of her fortune to 50 family and friends, and also decided to give a huge amount to different charities.

Frances said: "It's almost indescribable the feeling that it gives you to see a small amount of money making a massive difference to people's lives.

"It's actually overwhelming even to think back to some of the people with very little who have managed to make something magnificent out of it."

Frances Connolly gave away over half of her £115million lottery winnings (ITV)
Frances and her husband Patrick won the lottery on New Year's Day last year (PA)

But Frances said everyone who has been doing their bit during the coronavirus pandemic should be praised.

She continued: "What we need to be doing is saying 'Fantastic. well done for goin to visit your neighbour, well done for wrapping that present.'"

It had already been a great start to the year as Patrick had got a new job that would allow them to move from Belfast to England to be near Francis' daughter, and Frances was ready to return to work after a knee operation.

Frances gave money to charity and her friends and family (ITV)

They'd won £2.73 on the lottery the week before and won a tenner years ago.

Frances explained: "I said: 'I'm gonna keep doing this until some idiot wins it', and I turned out to be that idiot."

Patrick noticed they'd won last year, but they thought everyone would have won a share.

Frances continued: "We just sat staring at each other for 10 minutes.

Frances said everyone who has been doing their bit during the coronavirus pandemic should be praised (ITV)

"10 minutes of me being quiet is fairly exceptional in itself."

They wrote a list of the people they would be giving the money to.

The couple didn't want to go public, but knew the word would get out anyway.

*This Morning airs weekdays at 10am on ITV

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