Thanks a Lott

THE grateful brother of Scots lottery millionaires Tommy and Margaret Webb last night told how the caring couple helped him to walk again.

John Beckett, 54, was left reeling in agony and almost crippled after a horrific football accident four years ago.

Surgeons managed to hold his right leg together with an eight- inch rod which made walking virtually impossible.

He was told the pin would be removed in a year, but when he returned doctors said his bone had grown too much - and the NHS would not pay for a removal operation.

But when Tommy, 51, and wife Margaret, 52, scooped the lottery they offered to pay for private treatment.

Now John, who won't reveal how much the op cost, has made a full recovery and has even started hill-walking.

"It's completely changed my life," he said. "I'm so grateful for Margaret and Tommy's gesture. It saved me from a life of suffer- ing. I can't thank them enough."

John, Margaret's brother who lives in Greenock, was playing for a local Sunday side when he received the injury which split his thigh bone.

A year later, he was in such pain he could not walk upstairs and had to have his bed moved to the ground floor of his home.

But within weeks of doctors saying they could do nothing further to help him, Tommy and Margaret won pounds 1.6 million on the National Lottery.

John said: "After my thigh bone was so badly split - from top to bottom - my thigh swelled to three times its normal size and the surgeon said it was one of the worst injuries of the type he had ever seen.

"The next day I had an eight- inch rod put in my leg to hold the bone together while it healed.

"I was then told that if the pain kept bothering me I should come back to the hospital after a year.

"Not only did the pain fail to subside, it got even worse to the point where I was barely able to get out of bed.

"I was told that I could have the rod removed from my leg after a year but by that time, I was told the bone had grown over the rod and it was impossible."

Within a month of Tommy and Margaret's win they paid for John's leg to be repaired - quickly and without a problem - at the Nuffield Hospital in Glasgow.

John added: "The doctor did a few X-rays of my leg and said it would be no problem to have the rod removed.

"I spent only one night in the hospital and the next morning I returned home good as new."

Last night Tommy, a former maintenance engineer, said paying for John's operation was one of the best things they had done with their win.

He added: "We're lucky that we've been relatively healthy all our lives. So when you have the opportunity to help someone else out, that can be the most satisfying part of winning the lottery."

The gesture is typical of the millionaire couple who have spent very little of the prize money on themselves.

When they won they gave away pounds 600,000 to family and friends but indulged in few personal luxuries. They still live in the rented pounds 214-a-month two-bedroomed flat they have called home for the last five years.

And mother-of-one Margaret is still employed as a shop assistant at her local Littlewoods store.

Tommy's biggest buy to date has been a Lexus car, though he has also splashed out on a cookery course at a local college.

Now he says he is eyeing up a pounds 5000 professional oven - half the size of his current kitchen - to help him realise his ambition of being a gourmet cook.

Copyright 2003 MGN LTD
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