Belfast is big in lottery league

Northern Ireland players have scooped almost £200m

Belfast is one of the UK's luckiest cities when it comes to producing winners in the National Lottery.

Latest figures put the city joint third in a league table topped by Birmingham and Newcastle-upon-Tyne.

Almost £200m has been won in top prizes by Northern Ireland players since the National Lottery was launched.

Belfast's big winners include grandmother Iris Jeffrey, who scooped the biggest single prize in Lotto history with a win of over £20m.

Peter Lavery, a former bus driver from the Short Strand area of the city, won £10m over 11 years ago.

The company that runs the lottery, Camelot, is tight-lipped about the precise number of Belfast Lotto millionaires. But over 2,000 lucky punters across the UK have won a million or more.

The lottery has raised over £20bn for good causes since it began operation 13 years ago. More than 280,000 awards have been made.