WHAT’S THE STORY?

NEXT month will see the 25th anniversary of the birth of the UK National Lottery. It was on November 19, 1994, that Noel Edmonds hosted the first ever National Lottery show on BBC1, with seven people sharing the jackpot of £5,874,778.

WHOSE IDEA WAS THE NATIONAL LOTTERY?

SIR William Cecil, secretary to Queen Elizabeth I, in 1568. Cecil first conceived the idea of a grand lottery to pay for ships for the Royal Navy and the upkeep of naval dockyards. Scotland being independent at that time, and in the grip of Calvinist reformers, looked sniffily at this form of gambling and did not repeat Cecil’s experiment, not least because it was an abject failure, the public simply refusing to get involved in a lottery in which the odds of winning a prize were 16,000 to one.

Scotland has changed its tune somewhat – per head of population, Scots now buy more National Lottery tickets than any of the nations in the UK.

WHOSE IDEA WAS THE CURRENT LOTTERY?

THE idea of a national lottery had surfaced from time to time over the centuries and some were actually run, the last such lottery taking place in 1826. Small local lotteries were legalised in 1934, and a private sector plan to raise funds for the NHS almost made it to fruition in the 1980s but was cancelled after it was realised by Margaret Thatcher’s Government that such a lottery might be illegal.

Thatcher famously said in the Commons: “I have not the slightest intention of having a national lottery organised by the Government. I disapprove of them.”

Her successor John Major disagreed and emphasising that it would not fund Government projects but would raise money for “good causes”, he drove forward the establishment of the Lottery, with Camelot winning the tender to run the operation, beating seven other bidders. Their franchise has been renewed three times despite attempts by Sir Richard Branson to create a not-for-profit organisation and does not run out until 2023.

WHAT HAVE BEEN THE MAIN DEVELOPMENTS SINCE 1994?

LOTTERY scratchcards were launched in March, 1995, and the midweek draw began in January 1997, with Thunderball starting in 1999. The 1000th millionaire was created in 2000, and the number has since risen to more than 5500.

In 2002, due to falling sales, the National Lottery was re-branded as Lotto, and in 2004 Camelot joined with their equivalents in France and Spain to create Euromillions. Later in 2004 six more countries join Euromillions.

That same year saw the first online jackpot winner of Lotto, an anonymous Scotsman from Midlothian.

In 2013, Camelot announced that the price of a ticket would go up to £2 while there would also be a Lotto Raffle with 50 prizes of £20,000.

THE BIGGEST WINNERS?

The 5500 jackpot winners, of course.

Scottish independence supporters Colin and Chris Weir were the biggest-ever winners until last week. The Weirs won £161m on Euromillions in 2011 and that was only overtaken by someone who is still anonymous who won £170m on Euromillions last week.

WHAT WERE THE FAILURES?

THERE have been plenty, including jackpot winners who have blown all their money.

The weekly television shows have long gone, mainly because they were rotten. And many games have come and gone. Who remembers Lotto Extra? Or Dream Number? Or the Daily Play? Or Lotto Plus 5? Or Vernons Easy Play? Or Millionaire Raffle?

There are plenty of people who think the Lottery changed British culture for the worse as it made gambling acceptable, and the charge that it is a form of stealth tax has never been entirely avoided.

AND THE SUCCESSES?

CYNICS might say that the biggest success of the National Lottery can be counted in gold, silver and bronze, as Lottery money not only helped to fund the London Olympics of 2012 but has also paid for the elite level of many sports in the UK, so much so that it will be seen as a failure if Team GB and NI does not finish in the top five or six in the medals table at next year’s Olympics.

Governments have played around with the various good causes, and there’s no doubt that John Major’s original idea of “extra” money for those causes has been replaced by Government-decreed usage of Lottery cash. And the Treasury gets its cut of the income. Still, more than £40 billion has been raised for the good causes since 1994, and more than 560,000 individual projects have benefited.

Camelot do not give out any of the money raised. That is the responsibility of the National Lottery Distribution Fund (NLDF), administered by the UK Government’s Department for Culture, Media and Sport.

WHAT’S BEING DONE TO CELEBRATE THE ANNIVERSARY?

PLENTY. There are six weeks of celebrations which have started with the launch of a brilliant artwork by one of Scotland’s greatest contemporary artists, David Mach RA.

With its regular creation of multi-millionaires, the National Lottery has always been surrounded by hype. Expect plenty more of it before November 19.

COULD AN INDEPENDENT SCOTLAND HAVE ITS OWN NATIONAL LOTTERY?

WHY not? The jackpots might not be as huge as Lotto, but we could join in the Euromillions scheme and in any case the money raised here would be spent here – over the past 25 years, Scotland has raised more than it has received.