Lotto winner dubbed ‘UK’s most eligible bachelor’ at 23 back at work pushing barrow

Karl Crompton has been spotted getting his hands dirty on a building site, 25 years after his big Lotto win saw him crowned Britain’s most eligible bachelor.

In the first pictures of him for 14 years, bearded Karl – sporting a casual khaki T-shirt and black shorts – runs around with a wheelbarrow of cement on the Blackpool site.

He was also seen getting behind the wheel of a black Land Rover Discovery, reports The Mirror.

It’s just one of the expensive cars he has acquired since winning £10.9 million in 1996 – 18 months after the National Lottery was first launched.

Karl was just 23 when he hit the jackpot but has shrewdly gone on to build a buy-to-let property empire, doubling his fortune to £22 million.

After his life-changing win, Karl was dubbed ­Britain’s most eligible bachelor – but he went on to marry girlfriend Nicole Roach a decade later.

The millionaire is now thought to have split from his wife, however, and moved out of the mansion he built in Fylde, Lancs.

In a 2009 interview with the Sunday Mirror, Karl told how he had ploughed all of his winnings into property.

He spent £1.5 million building his five-bedroom Gothic-style home in Fylde – which was thought to be worth £3.6 million just over ten years ago.

The mansion had a large pond in the gardens and his parents, Keith and Pat, lived in a property at the front.

Karl, who used to be a trainee at Comet earning £100-a-week, also splashed out on another home in Vancouver, Canada.

He revealed that it was his mum who suggested he should buy a ticket for the fateful £22 million Lotto rollover draw in 1996.

Karl told the Sunday Mirror: “My mum and dad and brother helped pick some numbers then I went out with my pals.

“The next morning, I came downstairs to the kitchen and my mum said, ‘You’re looking at a lottery winner.

‘I’ve got four numbers and got £96 or something.’

“So I looked at the numbers and my ticket. Even when Camelot later confirmed the numbers, I couldn’t believe I’d won.

“It was £10,903,198 – a half share of the full Lotto rollover prize.”