A POSTCODE Lottery player who won more than £400,000 while her neighbours got just £6,000 says she has a “guardian angel”.
Retired antiques dealer Innis Gamble, of Fenham, Newcastle, scooped the largest share of the £3.2million prize due to a nifty trick.
She and husband Dave bought over 60 tickets – meaning she scooped a huge sum compared with her neighbours.
The clever couple are now set on completing their bucket list – starting with trips to New York and Thailand.
Innis said: “The world has opened! I’m walking on air. I’m literally floating at the moment and Dave is holding me down, so I don’t float away.
“This money will change our lives forever. I really do feel like I have a guardian angel now.”
She celebrated after her postcode, NE4 9XU, was announced as the winner of October’s Postcode Millions prize on November 2.
And 390 of her neighbours shared the remainder of the multi-million-pound prize, each netting cash prizes ranging from £6,146 to £36,876, depending on the number of tickets they played with.
She won a substantial amount more by purching a lot more tickets – meaning a higher reward if she struck it lucky.
Innis, who was diagnosed with stage 4 skin cancer last year, couldn’t believe her windfall after already beating the odds as she recovers from melanoma, which was at an advanced stage.
She is waiting on the results of a third scan carried out just days ago – after two previous checks came back clear.
She said: “I’m grateful to be alive. It started with a freckle on my arm which changed shape, so I thought, ‘I’ve got to go to hospital and get it checked.’
“I had surgery to cut out the cancer from my arm but in October last year tests showed it had spread to my armpit, chest and stomach.”
Innis, who bears an S-shaped scar on her left arm, then started immunotherapy treatment for the cancer, which was successful.
She added: “Thankfully, it worked and I’m still here. I had my last scan last Saturday. I haven’t had the results back yet, but my last two scans have been clear.
“And now this has happened. I’m just waiting for the alarm clock to go off because it doesn’t sound real yet.”
Innis, who owned an antiques shop, had looked to the sky while she held her £402,919 cheque.
Later, the mum-of-two said: “Unfortunately, I’ve experienced a lot of loss, and I was simply thanking everybody.”
She also credits her husband Dave for saving her life after eight years of feeling lost following the passing of her previous husband.
Innis said: “My life’s been up and down for years, many years, and Dave has saved it.
“I lost my previous husband 15 years ago, and I was alone for eight years, and I couldn’t have been any lower until I met Dave on a dating website.”
Innis, who married dad-of-one Dave in New York’s Central Park in 2016, added: “It was meant to be. We are going to enjoy this.”
Dave, who works as a complementary therapist, said they wrote a bucket list together and now plan to start ticking it off.
He said: “It’s perfect timing when you get to our age. You build up a little bucket list, and we wrote one together. It can all happen now.
“We got married at Wagner Cove in Central Park and it was the best day ever and we’d love to go back.
“We stayed on Seventh Avenue in a honeymoon suite on the 73rd floor with balconies and its own kitchen. We might even see if we can stay there again.”
Innis, who reminisced about taking a horse and carriage ride on their wedding day, added: “We’ve got to go back to take the horse a carrot. We forgot the carrot the first time round.”
Innis and Dave also plan on taking a once-in-a-lifetime holiday to Thailand, but before then Innis plans on writing a book about her life.
Innis, who ran her antiques shop in Norton called Yesterdays with her late husband, said that much like antiques, her life consists of lots of stories.
Adopted at birth, Innis found her birth mum, brother and sister 52 years later and said she’s always wanted to tell her story.
She said: “I think I’m entitled to write a book.”
The couple both care for Dave’s mum, Marcella Cook, who turned 102 on 2 September, and plan on celebrating together with a bag of chips.
