I was a bus driver earning £200 a week when I won £10.2m lotto jackpot – I celebrated so much the booze almost killed me
A FORMER bus driver has revealed how his celebrations after winning £10.2million in the lottery almost killed him.
Peter Lavery was earning £200 a week when he landed the huge sum in May 1996.
Despite living in hope, the winning moment was one he never thought would actually arrive.
Peter will feature in new BBC documentary Our Lives: The Lottery Millionaire and the Spirit of Belfast on Friday night.
It will follow as he launches several businesses and attempts to bring whiskey distilling back to Belfast 27 years after his lotto win.
But the documentary also explores how friends, along with his doctor, feared for his life after he landed the prize.
His pal Diane Poole said Peter was “eating, drinking, partying” in the days following his win, The Belfast Telegraph reports.
Local councillor and friend Sammy Douglas also explained how Peter was “a party animal and loved socialising”.
He added that the lotto win had caused Peter to expand his partying antics.
And Peter revealed: “Doctors’ orders, I had to stop drinking or I wouldn’t be here today. I would be up in smoke in Roselawn.”
His urge to continually celebrate eventually relented and he instead returned to work, before investing in commercial property and supporting community groups.
Now teetotal, Peter has opened an operational whiskey distillery – the first in Belfast for nearly 90 years.
And its location of a pumphouse where the Titanic and its sister ships were completed adds to the difficulty of the challenge.
The documentary will detail the hoops Peter had to jump through to get the project over the line.
Another of his projects is restoring a sightseeing vessel so it can be used to provide tours of Belfast’s shipyards and docks.
And despite his millions, Peter has shown no signs of slowing down, instead insisting he prefers to keep working.
He adds: “What would I do in the mornings when I get up with nothing to do?”