SHE went from earning just £9,000 a year and living in a council house to a multi-millionaire over night, but all a mum-of-three from Newport could think of doing with her winnings was helping out her family.

Single mum Jenny Southall won £8.3 million on the National Lottery in April 2007, but has now revealed that she's shared out more than half the money with her brothers and sister, aunts, uncles, cousins and bought her mum a bungalow.

The former cinema supervisor spent the Christmas before her windfall in a hostel after an acrimonious split from her husband forced the sale of the family home, leaving her homeless with her children.

She eventually moved into a council house with Lauren, 21, Kyle, 20, and 17-year-old Jamie while she worked at Cineworld, Newport earning just £5.85-an-hour.

But her luck changed just six week after moving home.

"I didn’t check my ticket on the Monday because it was a bank holiday and it was Friday before I went into Tesco.

“The woman put my ticket in the machine and said ‘Oh, it’s printing something out; it’s never done that before.”

"Neither of us had an idea what was happening,” said the 45-year-old.

“A little queue had built up and she showed me the print out and said ‘You’ve won that’. It was bewildering. I had just won £8.4 million but I didn’t want to shout about in front of the whole shop.

“I was in a daze. I remember whispering ‘Is that all mine?’ and she was saying ‘Yeah, yeah, it’s all yours’.

“I wandered around for a bit and I’m sure Tesco CCTV has film of me doing a pixie dance in delight down one of the aisles."

The news transformed her life and soon enough she had swapped her council house for a stay London's Dorchester hotel and went on a spending spree around Harrods in Knightsbridge.

“We really had fun. We had dinner there and chose the roast beef and Yorkshire pudding because it was one of the few things on the menu we could recognise."

Ms Southall and the children had to stay in their council house for six weeks while their dream home, in the shadow of Celtic Manor was finished.

The £1.1 million five-bedroom property is on a quiet enclave of five luxury homes, just a few miles from the council house she thought would be her depressing home for life.

She selected her own décor, flooring, tiles and kitchen extras that bumped the price up to £1.5 million and then had a heated swimming pool, complete with a Welsh dragon in the tiles, built for another £150,000.

But her big spending was still to come, as she bought her mum a bungalow and shared out money with her family.

More than half the money was given away to my family. It has helped buy houses, pay off mortgages, fund new cars and overseas holidays, it has made a real difference to all of their lives,” added Ms Southall, the fifth of six children. “I’ve got a big family and they are very important to me. We all help each other when we can and they were very supportive when I ended up in the hostel so it is wonderful to give back.

“Coming so quick after moving out of that hostel was fantastic. You can’t beat that for luck, can you? We were so far down and then the world changes. Amazing.”