Review of the Year: August

Here’s our highlights for August
AUGUST Graham Nield and Amanda Vickers scooped £6.6m on the Lottery.AUGUST Graham Nield and Amanda Vickers scooped £6.6m on the Lottery.
AUGUST Graham Nield and Amanda Vickers scooped £6.6m on the Lottery.

A lottery winner finally plucked up the courage to propose to his girlfriend moments after finding out he had scooped a £6.6m jackpot.

Graham Nield, of Dewsbury, had planned to ask Amanda Vickers to marry him, but kept losing his nerve.

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But after finding out his tickets matched all six Lotto numbers, Graham, 55, popped the question.

He said: “I checked the numbers on my phone app. I have five lines and the first four had nothing but the last line had all six balls ticked.

“I just couldn’t believe it so I gave Amanda the phone, She checked the number on her iPad and started screaming and jumping up and down.

“I was caught up in the moment and just blurted out ‘now will you marry me’.”

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The couple married at Dewsbury Register Office, followed by a reception at Dewsbury Rams in September.

A passer-by was hailed a hero after he rescued a little girl who was knocked into a canal.

Former soldier Neil Scholes was alerted by the cries of her mum while cycling past the family. He jumped straight in to fish out the little give and gave her emergency first aid to revive her.

Four-year-old Katherine Shackleton and her mum Helen, of Earlsheaton, were walking beside the Calder and Hebble near the John Cotton factory in Mirfield when the faimily’s boisterous dog knocked her into the canal.

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Neil, 35, who was cycling home from his work in Mirfield at the time, said: “I didn’t think anything of it - I just did what anybody would do. “

Katherine’s dad Graham said: “I owe him my life. It doesn’t bear thinking about what would have happened if he hadn’t gone past at that exact moment.”

Bustling cafes and shops could be built along the River Calder under plans revealed to make the most out of Dewsbury’s waterfront.

The town’s regeneration board hoped to attract support for the creation of a new promenade, provisionally named Dewsbury Wharfe.

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It would run alongside the river between Mill Street West and Wilton Road.

Dewsbury Regeneration Board chairman Coun Paul Kane said: “We’re in the early stages of this and nothing is cast in stone.

“There’s nothing much we can so about the big metal units we have, but other places likes Derby have done a fantastic job of opening up the river.”

Artists’ impression were drawn up the board arranged for £30,000 in public rights of way funds to be used to clear and surface a route along the riverside opposite Asda.

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