The Burning Passion of the Lotto Millionaires ; They've Just Won Eur 7.5m, but 30-Year-Old Michelle Ryan Isn't Letting Her 64-Year-Old Partner Away with Another Booze-Up. Get Home, She Barks, or Dinner's in the Bin! [Eire Region]

Summary

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HAPPY days are here again, the boys are on the beer again,' bellows a larger-thanlife Tommy Joyce, raising his pint high in the air before taking a deep slug of Guinness and belting out a big laugh that makes his belly wobble between the braces holding his trousers up. The 64-year-old Lotto multimillionaire pulls his wheelchair closer to the pub table so he can reach his ringing mobile phone, licking the creamy moustache off his upper lip as he picks up.

Over Tommy's shoulder, above the bar, hangs a giant green and white National Lottery cheque made out to Michelle Ryan - Tommy's girlfriend of 11 years - for E7,457, 357. Behind the bar, landlord Pat Monaghan, a small balding man with tufts of white hair, peers admiringly over his glasses in Tommy's direction.

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Extract

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The Burning Passion of the Lotto Millionaires ; They've Just Won Eur 7.5m, but 30-Year-Old Michelle Ryan Isn't Letting Her 64-Year-Old Partner Away with Another Booze-Up. Get Home, She Barks, or Dinner's in the Bin! [Eire Region]

'I've had that man throw E15,000 here on the bar on a horse and then another time he could be scraping the bottom of the drawer to make a few pennies for a pint,' says Pat. 'He's a wild man is Tommy, a mighty man. You could make a film about him.' Photos of thoroughbred champs Lucky Lyndsay and Istabraq line the walls of Monaghan's, a big old pub painted red, which sits next door to a nursing home off the old Galway road in Athlone.

Tommy's holding court among the five locals in tonight. Nobody's bothering with the pool table down the back, preferring to keep their eyes glued to the wall...

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