Two lottery winners will be able to open a decades-old bottle of champagne they saved for a lottery win after scooping £500,000 on the Thunderball. Weston-Super-Mare couple Brian Courtney, 65, and wife Julie, 62, won half a million pounds on January 30 earlier this year, allowing them both to retire early. And while the odds were stacked against them, Mr Courtney’s unshakeable belief that he would win big stretched back to the 1990s and a bottle of champagne. (Martin Bennett/The National Lottery) “We used to take part in a French exchange and in the early nineties we had a family to stay who brought us a very nice bottle of pink champagne to say thank you,” said Mr Courtney.