UK Lottery's Youngest Winner Tells About A Year Coping With A Sudden £1 Million Windfall

Jane with her dog and Louis Vuitton bags near her home in Edinburgh. Photo: Daily Record

Scottish teenager Jane Park, 17, was passing by a local store one day last year. The charity shop worker saw a sign for the National Lottery there and decided to play. It was the very first lotto ticket she had ever bought.

And she won - £1 million (US$1.54 million) in a Euromillions game. It turned out she was the youngest winner ever, and her life was about to change.

She was interviewed by newspapers, then taken to a photo shoot in limousine. "Plain Jane from Niddrie was on the news," she says.

Another National Lottery's £5.8 million winner, Tracy Tyler, did buy a white Range Rover. Photo: Daily Mail

And now, a year later, Jane says not much has changed in her life since the win. She didn't buy the white Range Rover she had planned because she still can't drive, according to the Daily Record.

And she got homesick, so she is not living in the luxury home she bought. Jane lives with her mother in a two bedroom flat in Niddrie, Edinburgh.

Her friends didn't get the dream holiday she had planned because they couldn't get time off work, or didn't have passports.

Jane Park said The hardest decision was to decide how much to give to her family and friends. Photo: BBC

The downside is that Jane says she gets bored not having anything to do during the day. She is currently looking for a job or trying to enter university.

She says: "Money can't buy you love, can't buy you friends, can't buy you a family."

"But it does bring a certain degree of happiness. I can do things I have never done before, that I have never been able to experience."

OUR VIEW: Jane announced her win on Facebook but we recommend she should not have advertised her win.

Winners with the National Lottery don't have an obligation to go public.

The National Lottery says:

"One of the most important decisions for new winners to make is whether to opt to go public or remain anonymous. If a winner decides to talk publicly about their win, Camelot’s PR team will organise a press conference and handle all media interest on their behalf, removing the anxiety that can accompany talking about a big win."

"If they have requested to remain anonymous, Camelot takes its obligations and duty of care to protect winners’ privacy very seriously. Unless a winner agrees to take full publicity and signs an agreement to that effect, no information about them can be released by Camelot into the public domain."