Meet Britain's luckiest couple

There is lucky, beyond lucky and mind-bogglingly, jaw-droppingly jammy. But a whole new vocabulary may be required to describe the good fortune of David and Kathleen Long, who revealed yesterday that they had beaten odds of over 283 billion to one to win a second £1m prize on the EuroMillions lottery in less than two years.

The Longs, from Scunthorpe, Lincolnshire, are thought to be the first people to win £1m twice. Consultation with Ladbrokes suggested someone’s chances of achieving this feat were more than five million times slimmer than those of Elvis being found alive this year (50,000-1), and dwarfed by the odds of England winning the next three World Cups (2,500-1) or the next royal baby being called Wayne (500-1).

The couple first won £1m in the EuroMillions Millionaire Raffle draw of 26 July 2013. They won their second million (plus a top-of-the-range Jaguar) in last week’s EuroMillions Mega Friday draw.

But yesterday Mr Long, a 59-year-old former HGV driver, did not seem unduly surprised. He said he had always told his 63-year-old wife: “I’m gonna do it again.”

Last Friday night I was passing the local shop and thought: ‘Yeah, I’ll give that a go.’ On Saturday morning I sat down in front of our telly and started checking the numbers. I checked the raffle codes. After a few moments I very calmly called Kath in and said: ‘Have a look at this.’

Asked if winning for a third time was out of the question, Mr Long said “you never know...they say things come in threes.” A Camelot spokesman said it was “extraordinary”.

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