Lotto winner scolded for $35 ticket investment

Press, 19 October 1987, Page 5

Lotto winner scolded for $35 ticket investment

Special correspondent Mr Peter Scott of Tauranga got "a good ticking off’ from his wife, Roberta, last week for spending $35 on Lotto. Mrs Scott said that amount of money was too much to gamble on something as elusive as Lotto’s pot of gold, Mr Scott said yesterday. He said he saw his wife’s point on Saturday evening when the family had not been able to. afford their favourite fried chicken takeaways and had to settle instead for hamburgers and chips. But an hour after the second choice meal of hamburgers and chips, the family was $642,675.16 better off. Mr Scott said he was grinning as his wife bit her tongue as his numbers

came up in the biggest prize pool on offer in New Zealand. Mr Allan Taylor, a family friend, was at the Scott’s house in Judea in Tauranga, when the Lotto draw was made live on television. “I remember Peter saying just before the draw that some lucky soul was going to be a hell of a lot richer soon,” he said. Mr Taylor then became part of the knife-edge tension in the Scott household as three, four, then five of Peter Scott’s numbers came up. “I want 37, I want the green ball,” he remembers Mr Scott saying. Mr Taylor then watched in disbelief as the lime green ball fell and the magic 37 came up on the screen.

“Allan reckons my eyeballs were sticking out and almost striking the screen,” said Mr Scott yesterday, after learning that his line of numbers had won more than $600,000 — his half of the biggest gambling prize ever offered in New Zealand. Mr Scott was chagrined to have to wait 21 hours after the draw before he knew how much he had won. Inquiries initiated by the “New Zealand Herald” finally relieved the tension in the ebullient Scott household at 4.30 yesterday afternoon when it was found that only two people had shared the Division One pool of almost $1.3 million. Happy-go-lucky Mr Scott had earlier confided

to a “Herald” reporter that he would have been content to get a tenth share in Lotto’s big prize. He said he was always mindful of the fact that 15 people had shared the Division One pool in the draw following the million dollar draw several weeks ago. Mr Scott said it was chronic that people had to wait so long to learn the extent of their fortune. He said computing technology was such today that winners should be able to learn within minutes how much they had won. Mr Scott says he is a punter who loves picking outsiders. He advises Lotto lovers to stick with their numbers and not chop and change week to week.

He said he always stuck with the same numbers and had so far won four prizes — two $27 each, one $39 and the fourth $642,000. Peter and Roberta Scott, their children, Clayton, aged nine, and Cameron, aged 12, and Rebecca, aged 13, and grandmother, will this morning fly to Wellington to claim their big prize. Tonight they will be back in Tauranga planning the dream house that Mrs Scott has always wanted. Mrs Peg Scott, Mr Scott’s mother, has the labit of putting the family fortunes into perspective. She said yesterday that she had confided to her :ockatiel Paddles that only an idiot could have taken the numbers that had won the prize.