Winning the lottery feels like a unreachable dream for many of us. Merely winning does happen.

During lockdown alone there have been plenty of large wins - including Ryan Hoyle, from Rochdale, who won an incredible £58m in the Euromillions in Apr and David Adams who was £1m richer from a Lotto win, the day after he was made redundant.

If they choose to go public, we oftentimes hear all about the winner's experience - from the large reveal to what they spend their life-changing winnings on.

But at that place'southward a lot more than to it than checking your ticket, finding out you have won and receiving your prize.

The National Lottery's senior winners adviser, Andy Carter, has spent the past fourteen years making sure lucky ticket-holders get their huge prizes and arranging those big reveals.

And once they've contacted and paid a winner, Andy, or another fellow member of the eight-strong squad, are with them every footstep of the mode - from arranging fiscal and legal support to even putting them in touch on with a life coach.

Then, it's off-white to say that he is the face behind the large snazzy cheques you see when a player celebrates their win.

Explaining what he gets up to, Andy told the Manchester Evening News: "I'm one of eight people and nosotros're based effectually the UK and when someone wins a prize of more than £50,000 nosotros pay them their prize.

"There'due south two parts to this job - yeah, there'due south the paperwork, checking the ticket and checking the ID.

"But the really interesting part of the job is looking later on people going through a life-changing experience.

He added: "Information technology'due south about, really, belongings someone's hand through this life-changing time. It's a fleck similar beingness a midwife to exist honest with yous."

Information technology'south probably fair to say that many of us have often dreamt near how nosotros'd feel if we won the lottery.

Just it's one of those things we won't ever know until it happens. But Andy has seen a whole range of reactions.

Including someone who got on the wrong side of his married woman because he couldn't believe that he was in fact a winner.

"Yous get people jumping upwards and down, you get to their house and they're having a party and anybody'due south round there already," Andy says.

Andy has been handing out cheques for 14 years

"Others are in stupor and can hardly tell a soul while some are worried considering they think, perhaps they accept a preconception that, people will look at them differently which is frequently misplaced actually."

Andy recalls 1 of the most memorable reactions: "At that place was somebody we went to. They checked their numbers on the Sun on the crimson push button on the teletext as it was then.

"He didn't quite believe he had won so he called his son who checked and phoned us upwards.

"We went to meet them on the Monday and when we got there, information technology turned out that the winner had said to his wife y'all need to keep the results on.

"The winner didn't believe these numbers on the screen was his. So he made his married woman go out the television on and nobody was allowed to turn it over until nosotros had been there. The married woman had missed her favourite Television set programmes."

While a large part of Andy's job is paying the winners their money, it also involves hading out some sage communication.

"The best advice really, and it sounds really boring and cliché, is to take your time," Andy says, "You tin't get past that really."

That's not to say that you demand to put it all abroad to salve for a rainy day, as Andy explains.

"I'd also say marker the occasion, so gloat it in your own way. I totally understand that not everybody wants to stand spraying champagne and get their picture taken.

"But if your thing is concerts, go to that concert. If your thing is travelling, practise it.

"Merely do information technology because actually, you don't want to look back on this in forty years fourth dimension and think I was so nervous that I didn't really cover it at the time."

And don't forget that it is life-changing.

"Yous take to mark information technology and take photos of information technology," Andy says.

"This is the story that will go passed around for generations in your family unit if y'all win."

Merely patently, what about the things we take always wanted to have?

Andy says: "I call back the other thing is treat yourself to something that in the size of the win is quite small just it'southward simply something yous wouldn't take done previously.

Ryan Hoyle won £58m in April

"That helps get in real. So, if you have been walking past a shop and you've seen a pair of shoes for hundreds of pounds and you'd never justify paying that much, go and buy that. Information technology won't brand a marking in you £1m pound win but yous wouldn't have been able to exercise it previously."

And remember when you said if yous e'er win the lottery that you'd split information technology with a parent, sibling, or mate?

"If you lot are gifting, people are hung upward on figures," Andy says.

"They say I am going to requite auntie so and so this corporeality. But I would say talk to those people first and notice out what they would want and what would be useful.

"There's no rush to give them a big lump direct abroad.

"If you were my sister and I win £10m and I give you lot £2m, I am making you lot a lottery winner.

"And all the sort of excitement and nerves I would accept had, you'd terminate up having at the same fourth dimension."

In more than than a decade, Andy has seen thousands of players receive their prizes - simply interestingly enough, it has never been someone he knows.

"I think I accept seen virtually two,000 lottery winners and I have not dealt with anyone I know.

"I have dealt with a couple of people where once you get talking to them you know somebody in common merely really distant, not shut."

"I am still searching for someone I know to win. That'd be great."

His job, as he admits, is plain a talking point. But the one affair he tin't do?

He tin't play the lottery himself and hasn't done for xv years.

However, this also applies to all the people who live with someone working at the National Lottery.

But for Andy, it'south meeting winners and sharing memorable, life-irresolute moments  that are the perk of the chore.

"It makes you realise people, the British population, are pretty good," he says, "They are generous, they are sensible with what they do, they are likeable. I e'er like them.

"The fact of the thing is that y'all are with these people at a time they volition never forget.

"40 years down the line, they might non remember my name, but they remember there was this guy that came round and helped them out when they won. That'southward corking.

"They virtually invite you into their families for a couple of weeks. It'southward a privilege really. They tell yous a few things that they wouldn't usually tell someone they have just only met."

The biggest thing he has learnt, Andy says, is that all families are different.

"Growing up y'all recollect every family is like your ain family unit and actually, there's no correct or wrong. Only everyone is very, very different.

"And people do good things. Winners will exercise charitable stuff or help other people out, pay other people'south mortgages off. It'southward substantial.

"There's a lot of people that win from the lottery."