A self-confessed football hooligan who won £1,000,000 on the EuroMillions lottery says that he came close to losing the win over a technicality.
Daniel Wright, whose fictionalised biography Northern Monkeys loosely adapts his rise in the ranks of Bradford City's hard-core following, "The Ointment," told podcaster James English that he had been on holiday and killing time while his girlfriend was taking a shower.
"I just thought I'd check my emails, and I saw on that said 'You've won on EuroMillions.' I thought it would be £2.50 or something."
But to find out for certain Daniel opened the official lottery application which had a bold notification at the top informing him of his win. He continued: "I wasn't really paying attention. I thought I'd won £1,000, then I thought 'That's not £1,000. I must have counted it 10 times, then I shouted 'Woo!' Like Rick Flair."
But there was a small worry, when it came to Daniel's windfall.
"I won the UK match matchmaker," he explains. "But I was in Cape Verde at the time. If I'd bought that ticket in Cape Verde, I wouldn't have got paid."
The transaction for Daniel's ticket had been on a regular weekly standing order. But he had been out of the country at the time of the draw.
When he called lottery organisers to claim his prize, they quizzed him on where he had been when he bought the ticket: "They said to me, 'Where did you put the ticket on?' And I said 'Well, it's a standing order, so it just comes out my bank every month'.
"They said, "Alright, that's alright – but if you'd have bought the ticket while you were abroad, we won't pay you. Imagine that. Imagine if that happened to you.
"So, if you ever win the lottery and you're on holiday, don't ring them until you get back."
Daniel still had another 10 days left in Cape Verde, so he wasn't able to claim his prize until a couple of weeks later.
That was enough time for him to start worrying whether the whole thing was an elaborate practical joke, given that it was nothing after April Fools' Day, and then to start experiencing corns that someone might try to sell a story about his criminal past.
He went on: "I think The Lottery knew that I've been in jail, but it's not it's not a rule that you can't be in in jail and play the lottery."
Once he did collect his prize money, he wasn't quite sure what to do with it.
"It's strange feeling because you don't know what to do really," he recalled. "You can do what you want so I went traveling for a bit. I got one of those train tickets that goes around Europe, and you can get on and off wherever you want for a month. But after a bit, I got bored of that.
"Even though it's great going looking at all these different cities, but like there's only so many cathedrals and museums you can see before you think 'F***,I want to do something else'
"So I moved away. I put some money into a couple of businesses here and there and then I just concentrated on writing books. I always wanted to write a novel and I thought 'I've got the perfect chance now,' just so I did that."
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