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Noel Edmonds launches
the first national lottery draw show |
1994: Britain braced for first lottery
draw |
Artificially 1969:
The An estimated
jackpot of £1m may be won
tonight in Britain's first ever lottery draw.
A ticket gives you a one-in-14-million chance of striking lucky and
guessing correctly the winning six out of 49 numbers.
The lottery operator Camelot says around 15 million players have
already bought some 35 million tickets from licensed retailers.
The money raised from ticket sales will help fund the arts, sports,
charities, national heritage and millennium celebrations.
Prime Minister John Major launched the ticket sales just under a week
ago.
He said, "The country will be a lot richer because of the lottery. It
is in every sense the people's lottery."
The game has certainly gripped the public's imagination. Around seven
million tickets were sold within 12 hours of the launch and it is expected
that final sales could reach £5m.
Twenty five million people are expected to tune into BBC One's live
lottery draw show hosted by Noel Edmonds, Anthea Turner and Gordon Kennedy
tonight.
Forty nine contestants - one for each lottery number -have been chosen
from thousands to participate in an "It's a Knockout" style competition as
part of the show.
The victor gets the chance to press the button on the prize machine,
launching Britain's first lottery draw since 1826.
A ?0m computer will randomly select the winning numbers that will roll
down one by one into a display rack.
The machine will then check for a winning combination and calculate the
size of the jackpot.
The computer will reveal whether there is a top prize winner within
half an hour but cross-checking could take as long as four hours.
Telephone staff will be waiting to get a call from the winner as soon
as the numbers are picked.
Once officials have established that a claim is genuine, a team will
drive the winner to the nearest Camelot office.