My lucky number’s never up

Nov 25 2007 by Alan Ross, Magic 1170

I HAVE a confession to make.

And it won’t score me any Brownie points with my fellow Sunday Sun columnists.

Everyone has something in the paper that they go to first. Hotbed, perhaps, to see how the team’s done.

Ken Oxley’s column, to find out who he’s going to get enraged letters from this week.

Or maybe Eddy Eats and his missus, finding another pub or restaurant in their never ending quest for the perfect Sunday lunch.

Well, I get to all of those eventually and much more, but first . . . I check my Lotto numbers on page three.

And every Sunday I face the prospect of another week’s enforced gainful employment as my numbers dutifully fail to crop up.

We give away a lucky dip Lotto ticket on the show each morning, with strict instructions that, should one of them win the jackpot, a 10 per cent donation to the “Make Alan Ross a rich jossdicky” fund is compulsory.

So far, not a penny.

But I’d never do a lucky dip as my Lotto entry. I’ve used the same numbers since the first ever draw back in the 1990s, when a million pounds meant something.

I sometimes consider not doing it . . . especially when, like last week, two of my numbers came up.

Is there anything more frustrating than that?

But then I think of what would certainly happen within a week or so were I to stop.

Inevitably, they’d all come up without my pound attached to them. How on earth would I feel then?

A little like the woman I saw at a roulette table many years ago who had been betting the number 35 fruitlessly all night.

She then had a call of nature to deal with, returning to the table only to find the little glass marker sitting on a pile of chips on number 35. None of them hers, of course!

Numbers, eh?