Poll: Has the National Lottery been good for Britain?
The National Lottery celebrates it's 20th birthday next week. Do you think it's been a good thing?
The first National Lottery draw was on Saturday November 19, 1994. Since then it has raised more than £31 billion for good causes.
Total National Lottery sales annually are more than £6.5 billion and the number of National Lottery grants awarded to good causes stands at more than 370,000 grants.
In two decades the National Lottery has given more than £40 billion in prizes and created more than 2,000 millionaires.
Some 70 per cent of adults play the National Lottery on a regular basis, and more than 96 per cent of the UK population either live or work within two miles of a Lottery terminal.
Another figure . . . the chances of winning the jackpot are one in 14 million.
Has the National Lottery been good for Britain? Vote in our poll and have your say in the comment box below.
More than 20 million people turned in when the first draw was televised twenty years ago. It was presented by Noel Edmonds and Anthea Turner and drew great excitement.
Around seven million tickets were sold within 12 hours of the launch and final sales for the first draw reached £45m.
After the first show, it was either co-presented by Anthea Turner and Gordon Kennedy, or Bob Monkhouse, all of them assisted by the psychic Mystic Meg.
And the National Lottery came to Shropshire in a big way when giant lotto balls were floated under our iconic Iron Bridge.
The stunt was organised to plug the revamp of the Lottery in October last year, when the price of a ticket went up to £2.
It made a spectacular picture that did the trick for Camelot as it graced the front page of the Shropshire Star. Elsewhere in the UK, the stunt was repeated at other landmarks.
