The end of Lottery updates on BBC One

When did those changes come in (adding in the extra ten numbers and increasing the ticket price?)

I know it's all just based on luck but when there were less numbers, I used to get 3 or 4 numbers quite often. Since they added the extra ten, I'm lucky if I get a free lucky dip every two months or so, let alone money. Couple that with the doubling of the ticket price and it's not hard to see why many would stop playing or care about it.

I used to play Lotto, but when I do play I stick with Thunderball, £1 a game, top fixed prize of £500,000 with a lot of lower prize levels too, much better in my opinion.

Deadly still gets his balls out on YouTube it seems, although presumably he has just recorded a million soundbites so they can cut and paste them over the draw these days...also the magic number branding just sounds like 'three is the magic number' which is a bit odd considering you need six magic numbers! (Although 3 would be a huge upgrade over the 2 I regularly seem to end up with if I'm lucky!)



Does Beryl from Bristol a.k.a. a random punter on the street still have the honour of choosing the draw machine and set of balls these days anyway?! I sort of miss the days of draw master Matt/Julie, I was always thinking how much their wage was for rocking up in some gloves each week to press a button...

I don't think separating the draw from the main gameshow helped either, cutting from a pre-recorded gameshow to a live draw in a different studio took a lot of the atmosphere away from it, but I think we have Fathers4Justice to thank for that one.

It carried on for a long time, actually - if you watch the draw with Lord Bob when the machine breaks down (still one of my favourite telly moments), Deadly makes reference to it being on Radio 1, and that was in November 1996, two years in. That was during Danny Rampling's show, I'm not sure it ever really fitted in. I remember it moved to 5 Live when the midweek draws began, because for the next few years they had to take a break from football commentaries to broadcast the draw. I think it carried on until about 2001.

The breakdown clip illustrates all the rigmarole that used to go around the lottery in those days, John Willain heading off to somewhere to get someone to pick the machine and balls, and that shown to us (with "3.27pm TODAY" caption).



On the night of the first draw, ITV showed Gladiators and Blind Date as usual, followed by a documentary about Princess Diana, but with Cilla linking all the programmes. Would be fascinated to see those links, presumably they were all pre-recorded, can't imagine Cilla wanting to spend all of Saturday night in a broom cupboard at LWT. For the first few weeks ITV showed a load of high profile programmes opposite the lottery, including An Audience with Ken Dodd and Alright on the Night.



The novelty has worn off. I still play it, but the main reason is because I picked six numbers in 1994 and can therefore never stop because it's guaranteed the moment I do they'll all come up. I play it with no enthusiasm whatsoever and find it about as much fun as paying my council tax. Well done to Camelot for achieving the impossible and making the chance to win millions of pounds so incredibly boring.

Raising the cost of entry as well as the odds certainly doesn't help either.

I only play when it hits a 5th rollover and if nobody wins the jackpot the prizes are now bigger at all levels. Euromillions I usually only play when they do multiple Millionaire Raffles or the jackpot is £40m+ (£14m is so not worth the effort). Set for Life gives me the best return now but always seems to be the case with new games.

I did like the Lotto raffle - which when they dumped it that was when I said bye bye to the main Lotto draw. The Lotto raffle gave originally 50 winners £20,000 each per Lotto draw, lowered to 20 winners each in 2015.

It was always fun to check the raffle numbers, as there was always the chance, and this extra bit helped. When they did the big change in 2018 it totally ruined it for me and I stopped playing regularly and I moved to Thunderball draws.

In fact playing Thunderball has seen me win £3, £5, £10 and £20 prizes quite often, much more than I ever won on Lotto from 2013.

I think I won the £25 prize twice and I have never matched the three numbers since the 2018 relaunch, but on Thunderball there has nearly always been some sort of a win for me at least every 2 or 3 weeks - with Thunderball just £1 entry, I stuck with it as I feel it is the best of the lottery games around in 2020.

Set for Life looks great at first glance, but you look at the lower prize levels and they are just pittance.

£5 to £250 are the lower levels and then we take the biggest leap from £250 to £10,000 a month for 12 months.

They really need to sort out the lower levels, as the wins are pathetic - Match 4 numbers and you only get £50, whereas on Lotto match 4 you win £140 and on Thunderball Match 4 you win £100 - Set for Life is really pathetic compared to those levels.

I think it's to do with the "These are the magic numbers" campaign they launched a while back. They only refreshed from the 2015 (?) look from the 13th Jan. Thunderball draw. I for one liked the Set for Life music!

It's not just Set for Life that needs a rethink of the lower prizes, EuroMillions does as well. There's some weeks when the lowest prize (2 numbers) has been less than the ticket price!

Euromillions has the problem of being linked with other countries, which causes problems too. The prize levels always change from draw to draw, so with the vast amount of money Euromillions has, they should have set prize levels.