Tabloids enjoy Lottery baiting

Media correspondent Nick Higham examines Lottery operator Camelot and its battering from the tabloid press.

At the start of this week the National Lottery's London office just off Trafalgar Square was boarded up in anticipation of Tuesday's Mayday demonstrations.

The lottery operator Camelot was battening down the PR hatches too, in response to a spot of noisy tabloid turbulence.

The story says a lot about attitudes to the lottery - it also reveals a lot about the workings of the tabloid press

The world this week has divided into two sorts of people. On the one hand, those who think Camelot a bunch of Scrooges for refusing to pay out more than £3m to a Watford couple, Martyn and Kay Tott, who lost their jackpot-winning ticket.

On the other hand are those who think the Totts should stop moaning and accept their bad luck with the same readiness as they would have accepted their good luck had they managed to hang on to the ticket.

The vast majority of Mirror readers are apparently in the first camp - more than 11,400 rang a special phone number urging Camelot to pay up, against 3,800 who thought the opposite.

Appeal

The story says a lot about attitudes to the lottery. It also reveals a lot about the workings of the tabloid press.

The Totts' tale began in September last year when Kay bought a ticket from a local branch of Londis with the couple's regular numbers (6, 7, 11, 23, 32, 44).

On 6 September the numbers came up, but the Totts forgot to check their ticket.

Fast forward to 5 March when Camelot put out a televised appeal for the owner of the unclaimed ticket to come forward.

The Totts realised the numbers were theirs, but could not find the piece of paper. So they rang Camelot (along with 114 other people who also claimed the ticket was theirs).

There followed a series of meetings with Martin Challis, a Camelot investigator.

Piers Morgan sensed a great human interest story with a convenient villain, Camelot

The upshot was that Camelot decided the couple's claim was genuine and, according to the company, was eager to pay out (in publicity terms the lottery is going through a lean patch - it would have made a nice story).

But the company discovered it could not pay. The National Lottery Act gives it discretion to investigate lost ticket prize claims only if they are made within 30 days of the lottery draw.

For the next six weeks Challis kept the Totts hanging on while Camelot consulted its lawyers, its regulator (the National Lottery Commission) and its regulator's lawyers.

Tape

Finally the Totts were given the bad news and Camelot put out a press statement on 20 April, keeping the Totts' identity secret.

The Totts however had begun losing patience and had started tape-recording their conversations with Martin Challis.

Armed with the tape they approached Britain's most famous PR man and chequebook journalism broker extraordinaire, Max Clifford, who took their story to the Mirror.

Last weekend the Sunday Mirror published their story in full, complete with several specially-posed photographs and headlines like "Camelot must pay us".

The company had put the couple through "the cruellest torture imaginable," Kay Tott said.

The next day the Mirror published a transcript of some of the taped conversations.

On Tuesday it followed up with a picture of Camelot boss Dianne Thompson wearing a Victorian nightcap under the headline: Mrs Scrooge: Your outrage as Camelot chief refuses to offer £3m couple A SINGLE PENNY.

It was supposed to be the first fruits of a new policy of co-operation between the Sunday Mirror and its daily sister under editor-in-chief Piers Morgan, newly-promoted from editor of the daily.

Spoiler

Morgan sensed a great human interest story with a convenient villain, Camelot, which has never fully recovered in PR terms from the "fat cats" scandal four years ago when it emerged that top executives at the company had been paid substantial bonuses.

No doubt, given the bad PR, Camelot would be happier if it could pay

Unfortunately the party was somewhat spoiled by the Sunday Mirror's rival, the News of the World, which also got hold of the story.

It could not get hold of the Totts, however - the Mirror, which is paying them £35,000, had spirited them away to a hotel.

The News of the World had to make do with quotes attributed to "friends" of the couple and a picture of their wedding day.

It was a classic tabloid spoiler made all the more effective when the News of the World alerted the Press Association to the fact that it had the story on Saturday afternoon - completely trumping the Mirror's scoop.

On Monday morning the Totts were on GMTV, engaged in angry exchanges with a senior Camelot executive, Sue Slipman.

'Hell'

"If you knew you weren't going to break the rules in the first place, why string us out for seven weeks and put us through all this torture?" Martyn Tott asked her.

"You have put us through hell. You have ruined our lives."

Camelot, however, remains adamant that it won't be paying. It says its investigator, Martin Challis, was always straight with the Totts (a claim born out even by the transcript published by the Mirror) and never led them to believe they would definitely be paid.

And it says even an ex gratia payment against a lost ticket is out of the question because it would set a precedent "that would put the lottery at risk".

No doubt, given the bad PR, Camelot would be happier if it could pay. It does not even have the satisfaction of knowing it is £3m better off - the money, like all other unclaimed prizes, has gone into the fund for good causes.

As for the Totts, they are now richer by an unlooked-for £35,000. And though they may not be millionaires they have achieved the next best thing in modern Britain, instant (if fleeting) celebrity.