Once a week for 12 years Les Scadding has bought two EuroMillions lottery tickets.

On Friday he forgot the scrap of paper with his lucky numbers scribbled on it and instead asked for two Lucky Dips — random selections of numbers picked by computer.

One ticket won him £5.80. The other made him Britain’s biggest lottery winner, with an instant fortune of £45,570,835.50.

At a press conference held by Camelot, the lottery operator, with Mr Scadding and his wife Samantha Peachey-Scadding, he was asked whether he would continue to buy lottery tickets. He thought for a moment before replying, with a grin: “At the end of the day, I don’t really need to.” The interest on their fortune will earn the Scaddings more in interest in a year than most of Camelot’s 230 previous lottery millionaires have won.

Mr Scadding, 58, said that he was convinced he would win the lottery one day but he added: “I’m a lucky man, lucky to be here today even without my winnings.” He has survived testicular cancer that was diagnosed five years ago. His wife has supported him since he became unemployed last Christmas by working 12 hours a day at her own marketing business.

Mr Scadding, a grandfather of six, and his second wife went to Tesco in Newport, South Wales, on Saturday evening after having checked his bank balance and found that he was £68 overdrawn.

He asked the shop assistant to check his lottery ticket. “The machine made a little noise and suddenly a pink slip of paper came out. The lady behind the counter said it had never done that before and she thought it might be broken. The slip said: ‘Please contact Camelot’.”

As he drove home Mr Scadding began to suspect that he could be a big winner. He said: “I had the figure of £50,000 in my head and I would have been very happy with that.”

His wife checked the numbers on her laptop. As she read them out one-by-one Mr Scadding said: “Got that”, “Got that” a total of seven times.

By the last one Mrs Peachey-Scadding was shaking so much that she dropped the laptop.

The next day they went for lunch at a restaurant in their home village of Caerleon, talking about what they could do with their winnings. High on the list were a holiday in Barbados, where they had spent their honeymoon two and a half years ago, and a black Range Rover Sport with an ivory and walnut trim. They ordered three bottles of Krug champagne at £126.95 each and left a £100 tip.

Some lottery millionaires say that their big win will never change them. Mrs Peachey-Scadding is more realistic. “There is no way you can’t be changed by something like that, but it will be change for the better. There is so much we can do for people we love,” she said.

Lottery millionaires like to share their winnings, according to Dot Renshaw, an adviser with Camelot who has been counselling jackpot winners for the past 15 years. The Scaddings say they will make a donation to the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham, where Mrs Peachey-Scadding’s late father had a heart transplant.

Mrs Peachey-Scadding is more used to dealing with large sums of money than her husband, who has worked as a lorry driver and mechanic. Her father set up his own accountancy firm and was chairman of the governors of the University of Wales at Newport before his death two years ago. The website of Mrs PeacheyScadding’s accountancy firm, Simple Profitable Solutions, was shut down yesterday owing to “diversification of business”.

Mr Scadding has three grown-up children from his first marriage. The couple expect to exchange their three-bedroom terraced house for something a little larger in the near future. They also hope to buy a home in Barbados. Mrs Peachey-Scadding said: “We can do anything we want to do now but the most important thing will be to spend some time together.”

In the whirl of excitement there was one person Mr Scadding forgot to tell: his 28-year-old son. Dan Scadding, a personal trainer from Avonmouth, Bristol, learnt of his father’s good fortune from the television news.

“I couldn’t believe it. It was really strange to see him on TV with a cheque for £45 million,” he said. “It’s not something you expect to see.”

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