diamond geezer

 Friday, November 19, 2004

It wasn't you - 10 years of the National Lottery (a clickable guide)

Seven facts about the very first draw (19th November 1994)
(1) 48,965,792 tickets were sold at £1 each.
(2) There were lots of "It could be you" adverts with that big pointy hand. You remember.
(3) The first BBC1 lottery programme featured Noel Edmonds, Anthea Turner and Gordon Kennedy, and was watched by 20.2 million people.
(4) The first draw used machine Guinevere and set of balls A.
(5) The first winning numbers were 3, 5, 14, 22, 30 and 44, and the bonus number was 10.
(6) 7 jackpot winners (rather more than usual) each won £839,254 (rather less than usual), while more than a million people won a tenner.
(7) I won nothing.

Seven lottery TV shows
(8) The National Lottery Live (1994, Anthea Turner)
(9) The National Lottery Big Ticket (1997, Patrick Kielty)
(10) The National Lottery Amazing Luck Stories (1998, Carol Smillie)
(11) National Lottery Winning Lines (1999, Simon Mayo)
(12) National Lottery Red Alert (1999, Lulu)
(13) The National Lottery Jet Set (2001, Eamonn Holmes)
(14) The National Lottery In It to Win It (2002, Dale Winton)

Seven unlikely lottery presenters
(15) Jimmy Tarbuck (3rd August 1996)
(16) Gary Barlow (28th June 1997)
(17) Shirley Bassey (20th December 1997)
(18) Rolf Harris (27th December 1997)
(19) Ant and Dec (3rd January 1998)
(20) Julie Goodyear (12th September 1998)
(21) Dolly Parton (19th September 1998)

Seven lottery draw facts
(22) The luckiest ticket is [01 07 22 25 31 47] which won the jackpot on 26th August 1997 and matched 5 numbers and the bonus ball on 9th October 2002 - total winnings £2,536,765
(23) The number 38 is the most popular (drawn 142 times) and 20 the least popular (drawn 90 times)
(24) Yellow balls (40-49) have been drawn more often than balls of any other colour.
(25) 19 has only been the bonus ball seven times, whereas 21 has been the bonus ball four times as often (including last Saturday).
(26) The number 28 once appeared in five consecutive draws, starting on 9th September 1998.
(27) Each lottery ball weighs 80g and is 5cm in diameter. The number is printed 16 times on each ball. Balls are made of solid latex rubber and are manufactured by the Beitel Lottery Equipment Company in Pennsylvania.
(28) There have been 155 rollovers, including 13 double rollovers and one triple rollover.

Seven odds of winning
(29) 6 numbers: 1 in 13983816 (typical prize £2 million)
(30) 5 numbers + bonus: 1 in 2330636 (typical prize £100,000)
(31) 5 numbers: 1 in 55491 (typical prize £1500)
(32) 4 numbers: 1 in 1032 (typical prize £65)
(33) 3 numbers: 1 in 57 (typical prize £10)
(34) winning something: 1 in 54
(35) winning nothing: 1 in 1.019

Seven lottery-funded successes
(36) Eden Project (£55.4m)
(37) Tate Modern (£53m)
(38) Commonwealth Games and Salford Quays redevelopment - Manchester (£123.5m & £64m)
(39) Millennium Stadium - Cardiff (£114m)
(40) National Cycle Network (£43½m)
(41) National Coalition of Anti-Deportation Campaigns (£340000, and cheap at the price to annoy the Daily Mail)
(42) Camelot shareholders (½p out of every £1 you spend)

Seven lottery-funded disasters
(43) the Millennium Dome (£628m for one year of underexcitement followed by five years of nothing)
(44) National Centre for Popular Music, Sheffield (£11m - closed after 16 months)
(45) Earth Centre, Doncaster (£42m, now closed to visitors)
(46) the Winston Churchill papers (£12½m to the Churchill family to prevent these greedy toffs from selling the family archive at auction)
(47) Mike Bassett: England Manager (£620000) and Sex Lives of the Potato Men (£750000)
(48) National Botanic Garden of Wales (£21m, and not quite dead yet)
(49) Mystic Meg (a big crystal ball and a few cheap trinkets)

posted 00:49 :

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