Bus driver spent millions but built a legacy in turn

By Kate Northrop

An Irish lottery winner who picked up a £10.2 million (US$15.5 million) National Lottery jackpot in 1996 spent a chunk of the change within a matter of weeks, but his journey from bus driver to local businessman tells a different story.

What began as a £10 million lottery jackpot for a bus driver became a blueprint for transformation and lasting legacy.

Peter Lavery of Belfast was a Citybus driver who was earning anywhere from £200-£300 per week in 1996, but all that changed when he won a £10.2 million jackpot in the National Lottery — one of the biggest jackpots Northern Ireland had ever seen.

He was 34 at the time of his win, which he learned about during a phone call while having a drink at the bus drivers' club after his shift. His sister would routinely buy him his lottery tickets as part of her weekly grocery errands, but he didn't believe the win was real. Thinking it was just a joke, he put the phone down and continued drinking.

Lavery was just about hungover the following morning when he and his family saw the winning numbers on TV that had won a jackpot worth £10,248,333 and realized they matched the ones on his ticket.

"It felt unreal," he told Cathy Martin on the Belfast Telegraph's "In Good Company" podcast.

Reality sunk in when a National Lottery supervisor flew in from London to confirm the win since the prize was valued at over £10 million. Lavery continued working shifts as a bus driver until he finally resigned mid-week.

"In the first four weeks, I spent £3 million," Lavery recalled. "Gave it away to my family and charities."

He also purchased houses for relatives and took 12 family members on vacation to "the best resort" in St. Lucia on a three-and-a-half-week trip (complete with first class plane tickets) that cost £66,000. He'd struggle to comprehend that he was really in tropical paradise every morning he woke up.

But his return to Belfast took on a more serious edge when he realized that the newfound wealth came with substantial responsibilities and repercussions.

"The head of the post office came to my door. 'We have 15,000 letters in the exchange for you,'" Lavery remembered the postal worker saying. "'What do you want me to do with them?'"

Thousands of people had written to Lavery for financial help, with some simply addressing the letters to "Peter Lavery lottery winner."

"People who come, they're in desperate situations... they must be so desperate to think you are the answer," he explained in his interview.

Thanks to the media storm surrounding his win, it seemed like everyone knew who he was. He responded selectively to pleas for help based on what "his heart told him," but he realized that it only resulted in a breakdown of boundaries.

"Listen, you can only do what you can do, and sometimes you give an organization £1,000, and they turn and say, 'You may as well give us two [thousand],' so as long as my heart tells you I've done something... I didn't have to do anything," Lavery reasoned. "And if you don't get that in your head, then you put your own head away, too."

He splashed out on a home in an affluent area as well as several luxury cars, including Jaguars and Bentleys, but he later sold most of them and held onto one Mercedes.

In the years following his win, he engaged in a period of heavy binge drinking and partying, which often had him out until the early hours of the morning.

"I didn't drink every day, but once I got a drink in me, I just didn't want to go home, so I would be out in Belfast until four or five in the morning," he admitted. "It's nothing to be proud of."

That all came to a crashing halt when he was diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes around his 40th birthday.

"I didn't have liver or heart problems, but my sugar levels were going in the wrong direction, and my doctor, who's a good friend of mine, told me to change my lifestyle, or I'd be injecting insulin forever," Lavery said.

Having "no choice" but to quit drinking, the jackpot winner now manages his sugar cravings and remains largely abstinent from alcohol. He realized in retrospect that the lottery win led to the "biggest upheaval" of his life, but it wasn't just the money alone that did it.

The health scare gave him pause about earlier losses in his family, including both his parents and later a brother passing relatively young. His father had died of a heart attack just fourteen months before his win.

Overall, Lavery estimates that he donated about £2 million to charity through the Rita Charles Trust, a foundation he set up in his parents' name. The Northern Ireland Chest Heart and Stroke charity remains one of the organizations he holds most dear considering his father's ailment.

"I set up that trust in the first year and within five years I gave nearly £2 million to different charities and raised thousands more through fundraisers," he told The Mirror in 2023.

One of his most notable acts of kindness was taking 20 children and their parents affected by the Troubles to Disney World. He later became involved in his local community with the goal of creating jobs and opportunities in Belfast, especially for those in the inner-city working-class section where he grew up.

"It's nice to give something back, especially to give an opportunity to the young kids who have come from where I grew up," Lavery continued. "I got an opportunity that was so unbelievable. Young people need a future. I can see what's happened to working class people, a lot of people are struggling. Unfortunately, I just can't help everyone."

Lavery didn't let his ambitions stop there. In 2023, he opened Titanic Distillers, the first whiskey distillery in Belfast in 87 years. He was featured in a BBC film documenting his efforts to invigorate the local economy by establishing additional jobs and a tourist enterprise using his own whiskey brand.

For his efforts in galvanizing the place he's always called home, he's been dubbed "the spirit of Belfast" by many.

Although he's approaching 65, the idea of retiring is not something he can see happening definitively, rather he thinks of it as a process that might happen gradually. As much as he uses his phone for business, messaging, and email, he still values spending his evenings sitting at a wood-burning fire with a cup of tea and watching TV.

"When you're dead, you're dead. I just want to create something that lasts and gives people a future," Lavery said to the newspaper. "It might be time to slow down, but I don't think I'll ever retire."

(Click to display full-size in gallery)Peter Lavery, standing in his distillery — the first whiskey distillery in Belfast in 87 years.

Thanks to HowellD for the tip.