For a woman who has £35 million to spend on a new home but does not want to leave the town where she grew up, house-hunting is likely to prove a tricky business for Angela Kelly.

Based on the average price of properties on the market, Ms Kelly could buy 48 houses in East Kilbride and still have change to spare. There are a mere nine houses that would cost her more than £500,000, with just one above £1 million.

Four days ago Ms Kelly, 40, was no different from any other struggling single mother, battling to stop her overdraft spiralling out of control and having to borrow money from friends to see her through a Saturday night out. But as she sprayed champagne in the grounds of a 14th-century Scottish castle yesterday, the winner of Britain’s biggest lottery jackpot acknowledged that many things in her life — including where she lived — were about to change.

At a stroke Ms Kelly, who has worked for the Post Office since she was 16, has become one of the richest people in Britain, with a fortune that takes her past the glamour model Jordan, the footballer Wayne Rooney and even Princes William and Harry.

Based on her postal worker’s salary of £21,000, she would have had to work for 1,500 years to earn the £35,425,411 she receives after winning last Friday’s EuroMillions triple rollover jackpot, thanks to a £1.50 lucky dip ticket bought from her local Sainsbury’s. She will now earn this amount in interest every week.

Ms Kelly, who is separated from her husband, Gerry Cunningham, and has a new partner, only realised she had won after checking a newspaper at the Royal Mail sorting office in Glasgow where she works.

She said: “I couldn’t believe it when all the numbers were coming in a row. I had to hand it over to a colleague to check it. I just pushed my chair back and put my head between my knees because I was so flabbergasted.”

She said that she would use the money to make life more comfortable for her and her son, who have lived together in a two-bedroom flat since Ms Kelly split from her husband eight years ago. She intends to lavish presents on her two sisters, and ended speculation about whether she will face a claim on her cash from her estranged husband, from whom she is not yet divorced.

“I need to sit down with Gerry and find out what he is looking for — he is not an unreasonable man.” When asked if that meant she would give him a share of her winnings, she said: “Definitely.”

Under Scottish law Ms Kelly has no obligation to be so generous. Scottish courts consider the date of separation as all-important and what happens subsequently — however life-changing it may be — is largely irrelevant. Scott Cochrane, a family law partner at Brodies, said: “Scottish law takes the concept of a ‘clean break’ on separation very seriously.

“Eight years living apart would be considered a slam dunk for Ms Kelly if she refused to share.”

Dressed in a smart black wrap dress with cream spots — the result of a shopping trip with her Camelot chaperones — Ms Kelly appeared down-to-earth and composed yesterday as she sampled her first taste of life in the media spotlight.

“It’s so weird,” she said. “Twenty-one grand isn’t a bad wage. It is enough to live on and I’ve always got by. To know that I’ve got that every week — I just can’t get my head around it.”

As well as a new dress, she has set her sights on a new Seat Ibiza — she only likes small cars — and a holiday to Hawaii. “I always wanted a nice car and a nice home, that was the two things. And an exotic holiday,” she said. But Ms Kelly, who describes herself as “quite a shy person”, made clear that she was unlikely to be throwing her money around on designer labels or endless pampering sessions.

After treating herself to her first- ever manicure, she said: “It was so relaxing. I’ll definitely be going back for that.” But asked if she might splash out and have a pedicure as well, she winced and said that she hated the idea of a stranger fiddling with her feet.

Her son John, however, has different ideas. The 14-year-old has already come up with a list of potential purchases, including a Nintendo Wii and a quad bike, though according to his mother “I don’t think he’ll get one”. A Mercedes has also been mentioned.

Recalling the moment she broke the news to her son, Ms Kelly said: “I says, ‘Well, I’ve had a wee win on the lottery’ and ‘Well, tell me how much’. I says, ‘I’ll speak to you tonight’. I says, ‘I don’t know yet it’s not been confirmed’. “So he couldn’t wait, he phoned me back within about ten minutes, ‘Do you know how much it is yet?’ That was when I told him ‘cause he said, ‘Is it a million or something?’ and I says, ‘No, it’s 35’.”

The winning numbers were: 23, 40, 42, 43, 49, plus the Lucky Stars 2 and 6. The amount dwarfs the previous biggest British EuroMillions win by Marion Richardson, from Gateshead, who netted £16.8 million in April 2004.

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