From engraved swimming pools to luckiest balls – Camelot Lotto era ends after 30 years

CAMELOT brought us jackpot joy with the National Lottery for almost 30 thrill-filled years – but now the firm’s number is up.

From next Thursday, bosses at Allwyn will take over the running of the big money game, which has turned thousands of lucky players into millionaires.

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Since the Lottery’s launch under Camelot on November 19, 1994, a staggering £178BILLION has been spent on tickets, scratch cards and online games.

That is enough to fund the NHS for a full year or repair our roads for well over a decade.

The new operator will not be making any immediate changes to games, with favourites such as Lotto, EuroMillions, Thunderball, Set For Life, scratch cards and online instant wins still offering prizes.

Mike Ridley looks at Camelot’s record-breaking reign in numbers.

12 13 21 23 33 36: Winning numbers sheet metal worker Roy Gibney had tiled on the bottom of his swimming pool in Grimsby after landing £7.5m in July 1998.

£5.5m given to charities and good causes by Ray and Barbara Wragg of Sheffield, who won £7.6m in January 2000.

7 IT experts at Hewlett Packard in Liverpool scooped the biggest syndicate win in November 2009, sharing £45.5m on EuroMillions – £6.5m each.

133 ticket holders shared £16.3m in January 1995 – £122,510 each.

£10,000 on boob jobs by Sarah Cockings, a social work student from Whitley Bay, North Tyneside, who won £3.4m in 2005.

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£12,000 from a share of her family’s £1m prize in 2016 paid for Becca Brown’s IVF treatment. Becca, from Nottingham, gave birth to daughter Ethel in 2020.

£1,000,000 given to a multiple sclerosis charity by Peter Congdon, of Truro, Cornwall, in memory of late wife Rosemary, an MS sufferer for 30 years. Peter won £13.5m in 2015.

£20,000 bought a half-acre field for Faye & Richard Davies’s dog Lucy because the animal was terrified of people and other pooches. The couple, from Brecon, Powys, won £1m in 2018.

£250,000 almost lost by Chris Jackson of Southend, who was homeless and sleeping in a car when he claimed a Thunderball jackpot in Aug 2000, days before it expired.

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22,000,000 watched Noel Edmonds host the first draw on TV – around 40% of the population. 30, 3, 5, 44, 14 and 22 were the winning numbers, Bonus Ball 10.

£5,874,778 in cash was driven to BBC TV Centre in a security van as the prize pot for the first draw

7 shared the jackpot, £839,254 each

£1 Ticket price for the first 19 years. It went up to £2 in 2013. EuroMillions is £2.50 a line.

895lbs/406kg Weight of the original draw machines – named Guinevere, Lancelot and Merlin. They cost £200,000 each.

£7,043,868 Jackpot on week two, Sat November 26, 1994, when the first millionaires were created. Four winners got £1.761m each.

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This post first appeared on thesun.co.uk