Lottery
Lucky Sods! by John Godber
West Yorkshire Playhouse, 1995
So How Do You Pick Yours, Then?
The Method Numerical
The most common way of picking six numbers in the average family is to start with everyone’s birthday. This usually gives a reasonable spread over the numbers 1 to 31, but obviously no higher. To choose up to 49, house numbers are often used, or parents’ year of birth, grandparents’ silver wedding, anything of that nature. The number 42 has proven to be popular, mainly amongst those who remember Douglas Adams’ Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, wherein the super-computer Deep Throat decreed this was the ultimate answer to life, the universe and everything. If only it were that simple!
Personal lucky numbers are also a popular starting point, with 3 and 7 being the favourites, and the three central columns on the game board are also more heavily patronised than the two outside ones. This led to the situation one famous week when an arrangement based on the number 7 confined to a narrow band in the middle of the board caused three hundred people to share the jackpot.
For more pragmatic souls there is always the ‘riffling the pages of a book’ ploy, or even drawing numbers out of a bag, bingo-style. Artistic types tend to go for an aesthetically pleasing layout of marks down the game board, while those of a more scientific bent have been known to keep scrupulous records of each week’s winning lines in order to base their selection on some ingenious and would-be infallible system. But the Lottery is nothing if not arbitrary. The mathematical approach will never ensure success because numbers have no memory – nor do they have souls, so the artistic route is also doomed to remain nothing more than a fanciful notion.
Numbers are everywhere in life, though, and one big winner scooped the jackpot by using the serial numbers he saw stamped on various pieces of machinery around his works. Other players simply keep their eyes peeled on the way to the shop, and jot down the last few bus numbers they see before going in, or a couple of car number plates. This is going to be at least as effective (or not) as the lady who says her system is to simply turn the board upside down and take her glasses off as she picks up the pen…
The Method Superstitious
Some people swear by Mystic Meg. I won’t repeat any of those comments here, although in fairness the BBC have many recorded instances of her ‘winner’s profile’ being enthusiastically corroborated by callers a tenner or so richer for happening to be a little bit like what she described.
Non-professionals frequently rely on dreams to show them the way to untold wealth, while others vigorously rub special spots printed in national newspapers which are supposed to be imbued with mysterious psychic powers. Sadly, some of these people are even allowed to vote.
Numerologists will base their selection around a complex equation to do with the letters in their name and their corresponding position in the alphabet. The important thing in all these shenanigans, though, is always to take away the number you first thought of
The Method Mechanical
Ping-pong balls are a pre-requisite here. Not only do they resemble the actual objects dropped weekly by Arthur or Guinevere, they are also light enough and sufficiently versatile to be put to a variety of uses.
First number your balls. Place them in a large dustbin (having first removed the previous contents) and give them a good shake-up. You can then draw them out by hand, or use the nozzle of the Hoover.
Similarly the same balls, this time numbered in waterproof ink, can be dropped into a spa pool or jacuzzi, and the first six which stick in the drainage spout afterwards will be your selection for the week.
If you haven’t got a jacuzzi (but still nurture fond hopes of one day acquiring one) and can’t be bothered to plug in the Hoover, you can always invest in a patent plastic machine like an executive toy tombola. “Push the button and watch the balls spin,” say the instructions, in case you’re having difficulty with the complexities. “Push another to choose the balls one at a time. Requires one C-type battery (not supplied).” At a retail price of £12.99, this is hardly surprising.
The down-market version of this is one of those little pens specially marketed for the job: forty-nine little plastic beads in the top, give them a shake, then upend the thing and see which six drop down the shaft. And you can even use the pen afterwards to mark your card! A snip at £1.99.
The Method Bestial
Dogs are the safest bet here. You can get the family pooch to sniff out your numbers for you in a variety of ways, or even give them some useful exercise by playing your numbered balls inside balloons and getting the animal to burst six at random.
(In an early TV commercial, of course, one dog, obviously above jumping up and down on a load of balloons, simply barked his instructions to the punter as he went into the shop. The punter, obviously not above following the advice of some fake talking dog in the street, replied, “Was that 7 or 11?” Fair dos, it could have made all the difference.)
Cats are useless because they never see any point in any human activity but goldfish have been known to ‘kiss’ dice dropped into the bottom of their bowls, and tortoises have been offered forty-nine differently numbered shreds of lettuce leaf. Even the humble hamster has been pressed into service on occasion, made to run around a circle of numbers, like a furry glass at a séance.
But then we’re all a bit like that aren’t we? Rushing round in ever-decreasing circles, trying to steal a march on fate. On the other hand, it’s only a bit of fun after all, and it’s all in a good cause. And you only have to get it right once…
Hand me the budgie and that set of playing cards, would you?
Note
The numbers which have featured most frequently in winning lines so far include 5, 21, 22, 31 and 38. They have been drawn around a dozen times each. The ‘coldest’ numbers have proven to be 10, 37 and 39. Not that it matters. Give it another year and the picture will probably look entirely different. Unless, of course, it doesn’t…
Lucky or What?
A look at some real-life lucky sods
As Jean and Morris, the eponymous lucky sods of John Godber’s play quickly find, good fortune can be a double-edged sword. Just as their friends and relations have their own ideas about what percentage of their new-found wealth should be decently shared out, real-life winners can also receive rather more stick than their winnings warrant. Stand everyone a round in the pub and you’re accused of being flash; tactfully decline to buy everyone a drink to avoid showing off and the same snide voices will brand you a stingy skinflint.
Lottery winners, it seems, just can’t win.
Certainly it took time for the first rollover jackpot winner, Mukhtar Mohiddin, to reap the benefits. In December last year he netted the staggering sum of £17,880,003. Previously a factory worker living quietly with his wife and three children in a semi-detached in Blackburn, within days of the thunderbolt striking he was forced to flee to India to escape the unwanted intrusions of the media (avid to be the first to find out his name and scoop his story), his colleagues (he never had more friends than he did the day after he won), and even his religious leaders, who frostily pointed out he shouldn’t have been gambling in the first place and had he considered donating any of the cash to his faith?
My Mohiddin has now changed his name by deed poll and lives in a £375,000 six-bedroom house ‘somewhere in the south of England’. He has shaved his head while his wife is said to have westernised her appearance. After having survived one of the most traumatic events that can befall a man, in the aftermath he seems to have adopted the only sensible attitude – philosophical resignation. “My wife and I don’t act like millionaires,” he said recently. “I still eat curries – but now I can afford better ones. I’m happy now that I have learned to cope with my fortune.”
Fortune, whether good, bad or fiscally obscene, is usually regarded as a blessing but, even if the lucky winner manages to remain the same, it can often bring out the worst in those around him or her. Take the case of Carol Cartman who won £50,000 on an Instants card and then had to settle out of court to prevent her boyfriend claiming a share.
Another big winner who, one way or another, seems to have received perhaps more stick than any individual has a right to expect is Mark Gardiner. In June of this year he shared the biggest jackpot so far, £22.5 million, with his business partner Paul Maddison. Although his new lifestyle appears remarkably restrained on the outside, many of those around him have taken the opportunity to paint him very black indeed. He is alleged to have borrowed heavily from his parents and left a former wife penniless. His adoptive mother has made no secret of the fact that she wants nothing to do with him or his millions. And one of his former wives was in the process of getting a divorce from him when news of the massive win was announced. Since at that time the decree absolute had not yet come through, the now former Mrs Gardiner is reported to have made no bones of the fact “I’m after half his cash.”
Mr Gardiner has now remarried, this time to Brenda, to whom he had been engaged for months before his Lottery success, and as she points out, 95% of those now putting the boot in probably played the Lottery that week. It could just as easily have been any of them, so who has the right to cast the first stone? Mark Gardiner’s response is even more laconic: “The Lottery money has made me realise who my friends are.”
We all, of course, take pleasure in our friends’ good fortune – even if, as Confucius observes, we also enjoy the sight of them falling off a low roof. The matter becomes more complex when we consider the good fortune of strangers, or even that of people who don’t really need it as they seem to have had more than their fair share already.
Mel Eddison’s business in Failsworth, Manchester, buys and sells fork-lift pallets and this, coupled with some astute property dealing, has made him a millionaire. In July he and his business partner John Biesty shared a total win of £2,501,994. “I can’t believe my luck,” he said at the time (a sentiment no doubt echoed up and down the land), “but it won’t change me a bit. It’ll take the stress out of life.”
He had previously won £800 with an earlier ticket, which suggests some people are simply more lucky than others. Amongst those who most decidedly aren’t is the Liverpool man who played the same numbers regularly by marking the appropriate box on his game card, which covered him for eight draws in a row. Tragically, his numbers came up in the ninth week, and it was only when he tried to claim his prize that he was told he had neglected to renew his ticket.
Even more tragic, perhaps, is the case of the man who one evening watched in mounting disbelief as one by one the set of numbers chosen by his wife dropped into place. Sure enough, it was a full house and in an access of jubilation he was on the point of kissing his spouse when she playfully leaned forward and pressed the stop button on the video. They had been watching a recording she had made of the previous week’s draw. She thought it would be good for a laugh. It took her husband rather longer than she had anticipated to see the funny side.
And then there are those who win but who promptly proceed to shoot themselves in the foot, like 33-year-old father of three Lee Ryan. In march he walked away with £6.5 million, whereupon he quickly acquired 1 £1 million farmhouse near Osbaston, Leicestershire, a £130,000 Ferrari Testarossa, a £30,000 Mitsubishi Shogun jeep, a £50,000 Porsche, a £45,000 Jaguar and a £40,000 BMW 325i Cabriolet, as well as £40,000 worth of foreign motorbikes and a £250,000 JetRanger helicopter. In September he drove his new £150,000 Bentley Turbo to court where Judge Anthony Palmer jailed him for eighteen months for handling stolen cars.
He had already served three years for burglary and car offences in 1984, and although the latest offence had been committed before his big win (the cars involved on this occasion were a Mercedes 500 SEL, another BMW and, bizarrely, a Ford Transit van), Ryan offered to pay £60,000 costs and compensation as an alternative to going to jail. The judge, no doubt in order to avoid setting a precedent, accepted this offer but did not suspend the prison term. Ryan’s only comment was, “It could be worse. I could be dead.”
Since nothing seems to bring out the essential character more starkly than the sudden unexpected receipt of a huge wodge of cash, it is probably advisable to make sure one’s feet are firmly planted on the ground before this happens. In July Terry Benson, a 61-year-old electrician, was the sole winner of £20,088,838. After celebrating with the traditional bottle of bubbly, he stated that he had no plans to leave the terraced home he had shared with his wife and family for thirty-four years “I’ve been working for forty-seven years and I could do with a rest,” he said simply, and added he would share half his winnings amongst his four children.
Similarly, May and Bob Carruthers of Silksworth, Sunderland, have resolved to remain in their two-bedroom former council house despite having won £2.5 million in April. Their three married daughters all live within a hundred yards of them, and they’ve received half a million each. “It must be every mother’s dream to see her daughters financially secure for life,” says May, whose one habitual thrift throughout forty-five years of marriage has become so deeply ingrained that she will likely now never acquire a taste for reckless extravagance.
Whether any of the rest of us would, the odds are we will probably never get the chance to find out. It might be comforting to think we all get our just deserts in the end, but that begs the question: who decides what is just? Certainly not the Lottery which, whatever else it may be, will always and forever remain precisely that – a lottery. Nice or nasty things can happen to people good or bad, and fate is the only arbiter.
Morris and Jean’s story in the end may well prove typical.
