Carlisle trainee gas engineer who won £7.5m on lottery wants to keep working
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James Clarkson, 20, hit the jackpot in first national lottery draw of 2025 but was back at work on Monday morning. His luck began on Christmas Day. After winning £120 in the Lotto Christmas Day Draw, 20-year-old James Clarkson decided to buy five lottery tickets for the first draw of 2025 – and won £7.5m.
Clarkson, a trainee gas engineer from Carlisle, was staying over at his girlfriend’s house when he discovered he had hit the jackpot on 4 January. He said he got up early on Sunday to check what he had won after receiving a message that he had secured a prize via the national lottery app. “I opened it straight away but couldn’t see anything to begin with. Then I scrolled down and saw I’d matched all six main Lotto numbers to hit the jackpot and that my prize amount was £7,533,329.”.
The former bricklayer, who left school during the Covid-19 pandemic, could not believe his luck. “I thought I was dreaming.”. His girlfriend was also sceptical. After he woke her to show her the message, she gave it a “sleepy glance”, denied he had won, then turned over and went back to sleep, he said.
He then called his father, who told him to come home. Along with his 24-year-old brother, Thomas, he sat on the corner of his parents’ bed, waiting for the national lottery phone lines to open. It was only at 9am, when he was able to confirm the win over the phone with an official, that he finally accepted he had won. “I think I just started laughing,” he said. “I thought, ‘this is mad!’”.
