Wallasey Evertonian Alex, 19, plans modest spending spree after £6.5m Euro Millions win

Nov 11 2009

Wirral Euro millions lottery winner, Alex Parry _320

A 19-year-old Wallasey college graduate is one of the Magnificent Seven lottery winners.

But when Alex Parry received the phone call to tell her the news, she thought she was losing her job.

Alex, who only left sixth form a year ago, is the youngest member of the Euro millions-winning syndicate.

She is now worth a staggering £6.5m after claiming her share of a £45.5m windfall. It is the biggest prize in UK lottery history.

The Everton-mad IT worker, who joined the syndicate at work in BT’s Royal House in Liverpool, now wants to buy a blue Vauxhall Corsa.

Syndicate leader John Walsh said: "With the economy in the state it is in, everyone has been worried about jobs, so they all thought I was calling to tell them they had been made redundant.

"Thankfully I got to tell them some good news instead."

Alex added: "My sister Natasha works in the same office as me but is not part of the syndicate. She was happy for me but I think she was secretly a bit gutted when she found out the news.

"I have a big family with a mum, a step dad, two sisters, a brother, a step brother and step sister so I will be making sure they all have a nice Christmas."

The group works through Manpower for Hewlett Packard carrying out IT maintenance.

They started playing the lottery four months ago and bought one of two winning tickets for Friday’s draw, which had a £91m jackpot.

Group leader John, 57, said: "I couldn’t sleep on Sunday morning so ended up checking the numbers on Teletext at 3am.

"I couldn’t believe it when all our numbers came up.

"I had to wake up my wife and son and daughter so they could double check I wasn’t dreaming.

"I had left the ticket in my drawer at work, so I went in on Sunday morning to make sure it was still there and then called the rest of the syndicate."

Also in the lucky syndicate are 28-year-old James Bennett, Sean Connor, 32, Emma Cartwright, 23, Ceri Scullion, 35, and Donna Rhodes, 39.