What would you buy if you won £45,570,835.50? For the latest British EuroMillions ticketholders, the question is no longer hypothetical. They share a £90 million lottery jackpot and are adjusting to the idea that, for the first time in their lives, they can afford whatever they want.

Most of us indulge this fantasy at some point, usually on a wet Tuesday morning as we are being drenched by a passing bus, perhaps imagining yachts, luxury holiday homes, Lamborghinis or the warm glow of philanthropy as we give millions away.

But in fact we might find that the things that made us happiest proved to be more basic. Photographs of previous winners released by Camelot to mark the 15th anniversary of the National Lottery suggest that what our RE teachers told us may be true — that it isn’t always the expensive stuff that most improves life. Last week it emerged that Stan and Pat Cable, who a year ago won nearly £4 million, still cannot bear to move from their two-bedroomed council house in Suffolk. They like the neighbours.

Tony Wells-Stubley, a former Metropolitan Police officer who won £2.2 million five years ago, cites his most important investments as his wedding to his wife Julie in 2005 and his collection of Action Man and G.I. Joe figures. Tony, a military history buff, began collecting them when he was 5 years old, perhaps acquiring one a year. Since the lottery win he has expanded his collection to 120, scanning eBay for uniforms and kit and buying Japanese, German and Russian-speaking ones. His wedding did not take place on a private beach in the Seychelles but in the caves at Fort Amherst, a Napoleonic fortress near his home in Kent.

What does he consider the most life-changing gift of his win? Time, he says unhesitatingly. “It has given me time and freedom to do the things I like to do. If we go to a concert I don’t have to book a day’s holiday. If you have a cold you don’t worry about struggling into work.”

Greta and Tony Dodd, who won £2.4 million in 2007, have splashed out on the usual lottery winners’ stuff — a new house, a Mercedes car, diamond rings — but their most life-changing purchase has been rather less glitzy. Both suffered from painful knees that prevented them from enjoying their favourite hobby, ballroom dancing, so they had private knee operations at a cost of £40,000. Tony, a former cab driver from Wallasey, Merseyside, had given up his job because he could barely walk 100 yards. Now the couple can dance again and consider it the best money they have spent.

European research indicates that lottery winners revert to their previous levels of happiness within a year of their windfall. But if the money is spent on improving their health or the wellbeing of their loved ones, it seems that the effects are longer-lasting.

Michael Egglestone, 64, from Sunderland, who won £2.7 million in 2007, prizes the fact that he and wife Norma can now visit their son and grandchildren in the Netherlands whenever they like. He also went private to speed up a triple heart bypass operation and, perhaps unusually for a lottery winner, bought himself a gold-coloured Robin Reliant. He doesn’t have a driving licence but can drive his Reliant on a motorcycle licence. “I bought this six weeks after the win after finding it on the internet,” he says. “It cost £8,000.” What is most precious to him is that his children are now “set for life”, both of them now working part-time. He thinks that the colossal EuroMillions win would be “hard to cope with”, though.

Sarah Cockings, 26, from Northumberland, had no doubts what she would buy her sisters Emma and Alex when she won £3 million in 2005. Both wanted breast implants “to improve their confidence” and she paid for the £5,000 operations, as well as buying a four-bedroom house for her parents. She is studying to be a primary school teacher and doesn’t believe that the win changed her as a person: “For me it has been about seeing your family happy. I was so glad to be able to buy them things they wanted. When people ask me what’s the best thing I have bought for myself, I have to say my two little dogs — Portia, a toy poodle, and Bindy, a chihuahua.

“It has come full circle for me now. I have seen what it is to win but I still have my old life and I’m back at college. Seeing the recession and people losing their jobs, I realise how lucky I am that I don’t ever have to have that worry.”

Take a wild gamble...

Since the National Lottery was launched on November 19, 1994, more than 2,300 millionaires have been created across the various games.

The first millionaires were made on November 26, 1994. Lynn Turner, then a shop assistant, of Knottingley, West Yorkshire, was one of three winners (the numbers were 16, 6, 44, 31, 12 and 15, with a bonus ball of 37) and won £1,760,966. A syndicate of eight pensioners from Newport Pagnall, Buckinghamshire, also split £1,760,966, and a third winner chose to remain anonymous.

The average value of a winning Lotto jackpot ticket is £2,090,802.37. The biggest single Lotto prize, £20.1 million, was won by Iris Jeffrey, of Belfast, in July 2004.

The richest prizewinners so far were the two ticket-holders from the EuroMillions draw last Friday, who shared £91 million. Previously the biggest winner was Angela Kelly, a postal administrator from Glasgow, who won £35.4 million on EuroMillions in 2007.

The National Lottery creates about four million winners a week across its portfolio of draw-based, scratchcard and interactive games. The have been 11,000 Lotto jackpot winners, 1,253 Thunderball jackpot winners and 13 UK EuroMillions jackpot winners.

In total, £35 billion has been paid out in prizes so far — 50p for every £1 spent on tickets.

The odds of winning the Lotto jackpot are 14 million to 1. According to Dr Oliver Johnson, a Cambridge University mathematician, the chances of winning a million on National Bingo are much higher, at about 200,000 to 1.

Winners must claim within 180 days. The highest unclaimed prize was a winning ticket worth £9,476,995, which expired in January 2006. This ticket was the 24th £1 million-plus prize to be unclaimed.

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