Eighteen people in the UK are celebrating the new millennium as new millionaires after a dream National Lottery win.

The "Big Draw 2000" - a specially-devised game for New Year - created a record number of millionaires.

More than £80.5m was raised by the £5 ticket sales for the one-off game.

In Game One, where players chose six years from 1900 to 1999, two ticket-holders scooped £3,563,220 each. They matched four years plus the bonus year.

No ticket matched five of the six drawn years to win the jackpot, so the money was rolled down to boost the prize money in the next tier.

Lucky numbers

Game Two created 16 £1m winners, each of whom matched the two drawn years with those on their tickets - 1575 and 2832 - one from the last 1,000 years and the other from the next 1,000.

In Game One, the winning years were 1901, 1918, 1950, 1958 and 1986, with 1903 the bonus year.

Some 237 ticket holders won £2,514 for matching four years.

The draws came after an agonising glitch in the last draw of the century, shown live on television.

Millions of viewers watched as the ball machine for Game One got stuck on its moving platform and steadfastly refused to move to the front of the stage.

Host Dale Winton played for time with special guest Barbara Windsor and jokingly blamed a "bug" as technicians fought in vain to free the moody mechanism.

Attempts to haul free the platform were abandoned and the draw went ahead regardless.

A BBC spokeswoman later said the problem was a mechanical fault.