EuroMillions youngest ever winner says she 'wouldn't wish lottery win on anyone'

11 January 2023, 11:56 | Updated: 11 January 2023, 12:10

Britain's youngest lottery winner talks about impact of her win

By Naomi Bartram

@naomibartram

The youngest ever EuroMillions winner Jane Park has admitted she regrets winning the lottery.

EuroMillions’ youngest ever winner has said she regrets ‘going public’ when she won the lottery.

Jane Park was just 17 when her numbers were read out and she won the £1million prize after buying her first ever lottery ticket.

The now-27-year-old opened up about her experience on an episode of Dr Phil called 'The Curse of the Lottery'.

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Dr Phil McGraw said to her: "You had stalkers, death threats, people hiding in the bushes and commenting on everything you were doing, which when you're 17 that kind of gets under your skin."

Jane, from Edinburgh, replied: "I wish I'd never won it, I wouldn't wish it on anyone.

"At 17, you aren't even a proper adult, you know what I mean, I was such a young naive 17-year-old as well."

She went on to claim that the lottery encouraged her to go public with her win because she was so young.

"You can be anonymous, but you are encouraged to go public - they prefer that especially when the case is a bit different," she said.

"So because I was 17 they were like 'oh this is kind of unheard of, you should tell people'."

Jane said while she didn’t regret any of the money she spent, she did regret going public.

Since she won in 2013, Jane has been raising awareness for the age limit of the lottery to be raised from 16 to 18 in the UK.

She said: "In the UK, it was 18 to gamble and 16 to play the lottery. You couldn't put a pound in a machine or couldn't go in the shop and buy cigarettes or alcohol, and you couldn't go into a casino, but you could play the lottery.

"I was basically wanting them to listen, like me calling them up and saying 'you should raise the age' they were never going to listen and that is why I went massive with it.

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A post shared by Jane Park (@janeparkx)

"Since then, that story went very big and they have raised the age to 18 and I feel like I've made a massive impact on that."

Dr Phil asked Jane what she thought about the concept 'the curse of the lottery', to which she replied: “It's a very dark fairy tale that I think no one actually warns you about.”

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