• 3 weeks ago
A lotto-winning grandma feels she has won the jackpot ‘twice’ after getting the chance to tango across Blackpool’s iconic Tower Ballroom.

Twinkle-toed Terri Picton-Clark, 72, became a national champion eight years ago but later feared she would have to hang up her dancing shoes due to the cost of her hobby.

But that all changed when she won the Lotto prize with a Lucky Dip ticket in January 2021 - something her husband, John, 72, said he always 'knew would happen'.

Terri needed six hours of 'life-saving' open-heart surgery for a heart valve defect last year, but remarkably, she managed to get back dancing just three months later.

And now she has been pictured on the fabled Blackpool Tower Ballroom - after buying two beautiful bespoke gowns costing £2,000 each for the occasion.

Category

😹
Fun
Transcript
00:00My name is Terry and I'm a national lottery winner and that money has enabled me to tick
00:07off some of the things on my bucket list, one of which was to dance at the world-famous
00:14Blackpool Tower Ballroom. In 2017 I couldn't talk, I'd had a stroke, they found I had
00:21a faulty heart valve. It was a problem but not a big one, it wasn't affecting my life,
00:28so I carried on being a survivor not a victim and carried on keeping fit and dancing,
00:37just learning to dance smarter not harder. In 2021 I won the lottery with my husband John
00:48and that changed my life in that I could take control of my health issues.
00:56I got a personal trainer to keep me fit, I had regular dance lessons again to keep me
01:04fit because the consultant said whatever you're doing keep doing it and I carried on doing that
01:11until my consultant last August said to me okay now it's life-threatening we have to get you in
01:21for surgery, two valves replaced before Christmas and I had the surgery done on November the 29th
01:30and I was told to keep on doing what I was doing but just be aware that I had a new engine so I
01:41was running it in. This ballroom is beyond anything that I had ever imagined, I was told
01:49it was opulent, I was told it was breathtaking but until I walked in I didn't realise the magnitude,
01:57the splendour, the ceiling, it's just beyond words, the atmosphere is really special.
02:06Thanks to all my good friends around me I have been able to carry on working, I have not overdone
02:15it because people shouted at me if I did and here I am ready to defend.

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