Frano Selak: 'world's luckiest man' gives away his lottery fortune

The 81 year-old won £600,000 five years ago in the lottery in Croatia, to celebrate his fifth marriage, after earlier surviving plane and train crashes.

He also survived other disasters including landing on a haystack after falling out of a plane door that had blown open.

Now the pensioner has decided that "money cannot buy happiness" and has decided to live a frugal life.

He has sold his luxury home on a private island, given away his fortune to family and friends and moved back to his modest home in Petrinja, which is south of Zagreb, in the centre of the country.

He kept the last bit of his winnings for a hip replacement operation so he could enjoy life with his wife and also so he could build a shrine to the Virgin Mary to give thanks for his luck.

Mr Selak said he has never been happier.

"All I need at my age is my Katarina. Money would not change anything," he said.

"When she arrived I knew then that I really did have a charmed, blessed life.

"I never thought I was lucky to survive all my brushes with death. I thought I was unlucky to be in them in the first place."

He added that people were always telling him he was lucky to have survived so many disasters but he added: "I always think I was unlucky to have been in them in the first place but you can't tell people what they don't want to believe."

He had his first escape in 1962 when a train he was travelling on from Sarajevo to Dubrovnik jumped the rails and plunged into an icy river.

Seventeen people drowned and he barely made it to the riverbank after suffering from hypothermia, shock, bruises and a broken arm.

A year later, he was thrown out of a plane on his first and only flight when a door flew open.

This time 19 people died but he was thrown clear of the crash and landed in a haystack.

Then in 1966, a bus he was on skidded into a river, drowning four. He swam to safety with just cuts and bruises.

Accident number four came in 1970 when his car caught fire as he drove along a motorway and he fled with seconds to spare before the fuel tank exploded.

Three years later, he lost most of his hair when a faulty fuel pump spewed petrol over the hot engine of his car and blew flames through the air vents.

Then in 1995 came his sixth accident when he was knocked down by a bus in Zagreb but walked away with minor injuries.

The following year, he was driving in the mountains when he turned a corner to see a UN truck coming straight for him.

His Skoda careered through a crash barrier and over the 300ft precipice.

But he leapt clear at the last minute and sat in a tree as he watched his car hit the bottom and explode.

He then won £600,000 with his first ever lottery ticket and celebrated his fifth marriage saying: "I guess all the earlier marriages were disasters too."