A lottery winner has described how the "stress" of bagging her enormous jackpot made her "sick for weeks".

Viv Moss, from Newquay, scooped up £6m in 1998.

But while many would celebrate the victory, she ended up losing a stone in just two weeks due to the pressure of the win.

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"The shock of winning was like an unexpected death," she said of the aftermath.

"I had sickness and diarrhoea for a fortnight, and lost a stone in weight, going from a size 16 to a 12."

Viv even stayed at her job as a hair and beauty teacher for a year after she bagged the life-changing sum so as not to put extra stress on her students and colleagues.

"I taught hair and beauty at a local college, but I couldn’t let the class down, so I carried on working for eight months until the end of their course," she added.

However after she recovered from her illness Viv and her partner, Ken, retired early and moved to Cornwall.

And the dog enthusiast even forked out lavish amounts of money to buy a car for her labrador, Stanley.

"The salesman was called Rupert and when we told him we’d pay cash, he said 'You’ve either just won the Lottery, or sold a business,'" she recalled.

She said she switched out her old Ford Focus for a much more glamorous convertible, but Stanley wasn't a fan of having the wind in his ears – so she swapped it for a Bentley.

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Speaking to CornwallLive, however, she said "old habits die hard", adding her first purchase after taking home the jackpot wasn't as luxurious as you might expect.

"The first thing we did was go out and buy a very expensive kettle. We were given £500 to tide us over while the rest came through.

"But at the end of four weeks, we still had the £500 because we didn’t know what to do with even that."

Now, she and Ken use the money to travel and help others.

"We help other people, give to charity," she told the publication. "The world’s your oyster."

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