The world’s luckiest man?

Perhaps you've heard that cats have nine lives. Well, Frane Selak has had at least seven lucky escapes, making him the world's luckiest - or unluckiest - man!

His first escape came when the train he was travelling on fell into an icy river. He managed to swim to the river bank with only a broken arm. A year later, as he was travelling on a DC-8 aeroplane, a door flew open and Selak fell out of the aircraft. Fortunately, Mr Selak landed safely, with only cuts and bruises.

Three years later, he had to swim for his life again - this time after the bus he was travelling in left the road and fell into a river. Accident number four came when his car caught fire while he was driving along the motorway. He escaped seconds before the petrol tank exploded.

'You could look at it two ways,' he says. 'I was either the world's luckiest man or the unluckiest. I preferred to believe the second one.'

But the accidents weren't over yet. Number five came when his car again caught fire and he last most of his hair. Then a bus hit him, but once again his injuries were not serious. The following year he was driving in the mountains when he saw a truck coming straight for him. His car crashed through the barrier and over the edge. Mr Selak jumped out at the last minute and landed in a tree. Moments later, he saw his car explode 100 m below him.

His luck was no better in his love life: Mr Selak has been married and divorced four times. 'I suppose my marriages were disasters too! he said.

But fate had not quite finished with Mr Selak. At the age of seventy-four, he bought a lottery ticket for the first time in thirty years.

Mr Selak won £600,000. He is now planning to buy a house, a car, a speedboat and marry his girlfriend, who is twenty years younger than him.

'I'm going to enjoy my life now. I feel like I have been re-born. I know someone was watching me all those years,' he says.