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A retired couple from Hertfordshire are celebrating after they scooped the amazing £18,992,109 Lotto triple rollover jackpot last Saturday (26 January 2008).

Steve (58) and Ida (68) Smith from Hemel Hempstead play Lotto regularly but they almost missed out on this fantastic prize when Steve forgot to buy an extra few Lucky Dips.

Steve, a retired chargehand hospital porter, explained: “We always buy a few lines for Lotto every Wednesday and Saturday but this time, because it was a Triple Rollover, Ida asked me to buy some extra Lucky Dips, just in case.

“I’d completely forgotten until Ida reminded me when we were driving home from seeing family on Saturday afternoon. Luckily, I saw a shop ahead so we stopped off and bought three Lucky Dip tickets – and it was one of those that hit the jackpot!”

Ida, who used to work in the laundry at the same hospital, said: “I was just getting Sunday lunch ready when Steve went to check our numbers on Teletext but none of them were winners. I still had the Lucky Dip tickets so I started checking those and saw we’d matched three numbers.”

Steve continued: “Ida said we’d matched three numbers but I had a look at the ticket and told her we’d matched four. Then I looked again and realised we’d matched all six! We couldn’t believe it. We left the Teletext pages on for hours and just kept looking at it, worrying the numbers might change!”

Top of the shopping list is a four-bedroomed bungalow with some land for stables and a paddock as well as a top-of-the-range Range Rover. The couple’s first priority, however, is to look after their family and friends before embarking on a shopping spree for new clothes.

Steve said: “I’ve always loved horses and it would be fantastic to have some land where we could keep them. It’s amazing to have become multi-millionaires overnight but we are just looking forward to making our family comfortable.”

Steve bought the winning ticket – a Lucky Dip® – at Sarratt SPSO, The Green Sarratt, Rickmansworth. The winning Lotto numbers on Saturday 26 January were: 1, 2, 6, 13, 38, and 43.

This Wednesday (30 January), there is an estimated £2.5 million Lotto jackpot available to win – while Friday’s (2 February) EuroMillions jackpot is an estimated £11 million. Every Lotto play slip now comes with its own Dream Number – it is up to players to mark ‘yes’ to give their Dream Number its chance of winning up to £500,000, or choose a Lucky Dip.