Mother won lottery just weeks after playing fake scratchcard prank on husband

A mother-of-three won £1m in the lottery after pranking her husband with a fake scratchcard just weeks before.

Charlotte Peart, 36, told her husband Daniel they had won £250,000 on a scratchcard before she revealed she was just pulling his leg.

But just two weeks later, the couple from Whittlesey near Peterborough ran into each other's arms laughing and crying after discovering they had genuinely won a life-changing amount of money.

Geography may have played a role in the couple's fortune, as Peterborough has been named among the top 10 luckiest locations in the UK by the National Lottery.

The Cambridgeshire city is number nine on the list and has produced 142 millionaires since the National Lottery’s launch in 1994.

Birmingham tops the list with 234 millionaires, followed by Belfast with 202, and Glasgow with 178. Manchester has also had a recent string of winners, topping the ranking of cities over the last three years, with 30 millionaires.

Ms Peart bought her lucky ticket in 2018 when she was 28 years old. She entered the Lotto Hotpicks with a spare £1.50 that she had left in her lottery account – a game she had not played before.

“I checked my email the following morning, which said: ‘Congratulations, you’ve won a prize.’ I thought I had won a lucky dip or something. But when I logged on to my account it came up with a lot more numbers,” Ms Peart told The Independent, explaining she mistook the jackpot for an advertisement rather than their actual winnings.

“I had only just woken up, so I wasn't quite awake yet, and I thought I hadn’t read it right. So, I rang my husband who was at work.”

But following her prank a few weeks earlier, Mr Peart had to log in to her account to believe it was true.

“When they confirmed it over the phone, we were ecstatic; we just ran to each other’s arms and cried,” Ms Peart said.

Once the £1m sum landed in their account, they began searching for a home that would accommodate their family of five, took a luxury holiday to Lapland and bought their children special Christmas gifts, which included three hoverboards.

Since winning the lottery, Ms Peart has done some charity work with the National Lottery, including making veggie boxes for local frontline workers, and set up a Ladies Circle in Whittlesey.

“I just want to let people know that luck can happen anywhere. It doesn't matter what background you have, what community you're from, or anything like that,” Ms Peart said.

Kathy Garrett, winners experience lead at Allwyn, operator of the National Lottery, said: "One of the things we love most about the National Lottery is seeing luck turn up in every corner of the UK. From big cities to small towns, we've celebrated thousands of life-changing wins over the years, and these figures show that there is no single postcode for luck.

“More than 8,000 people have become millionaires since launch, and every draw creates the possibility that the next big winner could come from anywhere.”

Players of the National Lottery also raise around £33m every week for its funded projects. Since its launch in 1994, more than £53bn has been raised, funding 680,000 projects in every part of the UK.