Sisters had to keep lottery fortune secret
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Sisters Natasha Horne and Coralie Pickering with Nick Knowles.
TWO Elgin sisters had to keep their "Secret Fortune" under wraps for nine months.
Their good fortune in scooping £75,000 on The National Lottery programme was revealed to the nation last Saturday night on prime time television.
However, Natasha Horne and Coralie Pickering have been secretly spending their winnings since the show was filmed last June.
They had to keep it a well-guarded secret from all but close family until it finally aired on BBC1 last Saturday.
The Lottery quiz show is hosted by Nick Knowles and sees contestants compete for a chance of winning anything from £100 to £100,000, depending on how they answer a series of questions.
After walking away with their massive windfall last year, Natasha (32) and Coralie (39), admitted it was surreal and exciting to watch it for the first time since they filmed the programme.
"It was incredible to watch it back and really quite exciting," said Natasha.
"We had to keep our win a secret. All we could say was we had been on the show but people suspected we hadn’t done too badly.
"It was one of the most fantastic experiences of my life," she added.
After applying to go on the show last May, the sisters successfully made it through an audition before filming took place last June in Glasgow.
"The whole filming took about three hours which they edited down to around 50 minutes. Nick Knowles was fantastic and so down to earth," said Natasha.
"It was really nerve-racking but the production team at Wild Rover were fantastic and supported you every minute."
Coralie admitted: "It was a really big secret to keep. The fact we were talking about the show and we were happy, people guessed we had done well.
"It was quite surreal and we couldn’t quite believe what had happened. It was the weirdest three hours and at the end of it we were walking off with £75,000."
The sisters threw a small party for family and close friends on Saturday to watch their appearance and celebrate their success. Their mum Del had been among the audience last year when the programme was filmed.
Natasha, who works for Moray haulage firm A. and F. Grant at Ballindalloch, had been on maternity leave last year when she was surfing the net and saw an appeal for contestants on the show.
Natasha and husband Karl Fyvie, who works at Bookers cash and carry store in Elgin, have spent some of their money on renovations to the home they share with their daughters Jada (7) and Zahra (1), and also put some away for a rainy day. The couple married last week after Karl proposed to Natasha last November at a Highland Hospice charity masquerade ball in Inverness.
Coralie and husband David run their own CCL Consulting financial consultancy business from home. They have a daughter Yasmine (7) and son Lewis (4).
They enjoyed a luxury holiday to Egypt last year with their Lottery windfall and have also built an extension to their home.
