UK's one-time youngest lottery winner found dead

Stuart Donnelly was just 17 when in 1997 he became the youngest person to win the National Lottery.

Unlike the other members of his syndicate who raised their pre-requisite glasses of champagne for the cameras at the press conference to publicise their £25 million payout (NZ$54.3 million), the trainee chemist toasted his good fortune with Coca-Cola.

Yesterday police confirmed that Donnelly, 29, had been found dead by a relative in the isolated bungalow in which he lived alone at the bottom of a single-lane track.

A spokesman for Dumfries and Galloway police said an investigation was under way, although there were not thought to be any suspicious circumstances.

His mother May, 52, who was on holiday in Portugual, was returning to Scotland to await the results of a post-mortem.

She is understood to have urged relatives to check on her son after ringing the house repeatedly while she was away but receiving no reply.

Donnelly had spent the years since matching six numbers on the first line of a £5 ticket struggling to cope with the notoriety of being, until 2003, the game's youngest winner.

The money had transformed the life of the quietly spoken Celtic fan, who before his win was living on £60 a week with his ailing father near Glasgow.

He had even had to borrow the bus fare to pick up his £1.9 million cheque.

Those were the early days of the Lottery, when media interest in winners was intense.

So, too, were the attentions of people who wished to help him spend the cash and the £2,400 he was said to be earning in interest.

"It was very hard to deal with all the attention I got. I even had people camping outside my house," Donnelly said in 2003. "It put a huge strain on me and my family."

The teenager rapidly abandoned his pre-Lottery world.

He gave up his job as a trainee dispenser at a local chemist's shop and ditched the part-time college course that would have given him the qualifications for a steady career.

Instead he chose to lock himself away in his home deep in the Scottish countryside where he had lived alone since the death of the man who was both his father and closest friend, Daniel Donnelly.

He was rarely seen in the village and most of those who spoke to reporters investigating the increasingly secretive Lottery winner in their midst believed the money had brought him little in the way of happiness.

Mr Donnelly senior lived to see only two years of the good life, dying of a heart attack aged just 45 while on holiday in Phuket, Thailand.

It was a devastating blow to his son.

The two had moved more than 100 miles away from the two-bedroom ex-council flat in Neilston, Renfrewshire, where they had lived together following Daniel's split from Stuart's mother, May.

Though modest by the standards of some winners, the £169,000 bungalow they bought at Buittle Bridge, near Castle Douglas, was described yesterday as a "millionaire's paradise" packed with luxuries.

Father and son had been extraordinarily close, sharing both the spoils and pressures of sudden wealth.

Each had their own front door, while inside was a snooker table n a joint passion which in their previous lives they used to enjoy playing together at the local pub.

Mr Donnelly senior, who had been forced to give up work as an engineer because of worsening polio, had long relied on Stuart for physical and financial support.

Even before the win the youngster was the household's main breadwinner. His father was glowingly proud of him.

"I couldn't get a better son," he said in an interview soon after the win.

"He's the nicest person you could meet. Stuart doesn't drink or smoke or take drugs. He's here to look after me round the clock. I'm not just saying that because he's worth a few bob. Even if he wasn't a millionaire he would still be a super son."

Stuart's generosity was well known.

As well as the new home for his father he also bought a bungalow for his mother near Irvine in Aberdeenshire, which she shared with her two younger children. Other relatives, too, shared the cash.

There were holiday properties abroad, including one in Thailand where Stuart enjoyed his first foreign break.

He bought a £2,000 executive seat at Celtic Park after years of struggling to get a ticket for matches and he also gave £15,000 to Yorkhill Hospital in Glasgow, where his younger brother was treated for a genetic disorder.

But from the start he little idea what to do with his new-found wealth.

"I don't know what to do with it. I don't want a car, I can't drive. I might buy a pool table and maybe a house to put it in but who knows?" he told reporters after receiving the cheque.

The lack of direction had continued into his 20s.

On his page on social networking site Bebo, he admitted he did not like being around others and listed his activities as: "Sleeping, watching TV, listening to music, surfing the net. Basically, anything that involves not leaving the house."

- THE INDEPENDENT