It could be you - mystery Briton wins £161m

When the lucky recipient of Europe's biggest lottery win to date does claim the prize, he or she will be launched straight into the list of the top 500 richest people in the UK, going straight in at number 430, shifting the likes of Sir Tom Jones and David Bowie down a notch in the "rich list".

The ticket is worth just 4m less than the fortune of showbusiness royalty David and Victoria Beckham. The winner will be twice as rich as Scottish Hollywood legend Sir Sean Connery and Roger Taylor, the drummer with rock band Queen.

The lucky player matched all five main numbers and both Lucky Stars to land the bumper prize in Tuesday's draw. It is not yet known whether the overnight multi-millionaire is an individual or in a syndicate, or where they are from.

The massive jackpot was capped after a series of rollovers made it the largest yet in the UK and Europe.

The exact amount to be claimed by the winner is 161,653,000. Two other UK-based lottery players won 1.7m after matching five numbers and one Lucky Star.

A National Lottery spokesman said: "This is amazing news - we are absolutely delighted that a UK ticket-holder has scooped the entire jackpot."

Previously, the largest lottery winner in the UK was an anonymous player who claimed 113m in the EuroMillions in October last year.

But the prospect of landing such a massive, life-changing payout could be the reason the ticket-holder has yet to come forward. Dr Rick Norris, chartered psychologist and author of Think Yourself Happy, said that to be suddenly handed such a large amount of money could effectively ruin the recipient's life.

"It's a complete shock," he said. "This person is going to go through a massive change in lifestyle. It's quite mind-numbing the number of changes and choices this person will have.

• So where does the winner fall on UK's rich list?

"To be parachuted into this world, they feel like aliens. They will no longer be able to mix with the people they knew previously. It could be very traumatic for them.

"There is a lot of evidence of people who have won the lottery and gone on to suffer depression. The ones who are best suited to it are those who accept quickly that their lives will never be the same. They also tend to be very sensible with their money."

He said that one of the main issues would come from giving up their jobs and effectively being cast adrift on a sea of luxury.

"Work does give us social contact, many of our friends are people who we work with, so you would be cut off from your immediate social group," he said.

"Secondly, your daily structure goes. Much as we might moan about work, it helps us structure our week and gives us purpose. Remove work and you can find that depression follows."The third thing is that work usually feeds our sense of self-esteem, and if you don't have work you lose that. The fourth, work does is give us a contrast to our days off."

There have been many examples of unhappy endings for lottery winners. Stuart Donnelly, from Glasgow, won 1.9m at age of 17 in 1997, making him the youngest lottery winner at that time. A college student living on a council estate, the win turned him into a recluse. Last year, he was found dead at the age of 29 in his home in Castle Douglas.

The winning numbers were 17, 19, 38, 42 and 45, and the Lucky Stars were 9 and 10.