Two minutes, 38 seconds ! That's how long it'll take Norwich to score. Have a guess.

[Eric the Half a Bee]

And yet, who would choose a sequential series when paying for a lottery ticket? Very few, I suppose, because it just strains credulity. Interestingly, just such a series cropped up Dec. 1 when the South Africa Powerball drew 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 and 10. There were 20 winners, a far higher number than usually share a jackpot, so people do play them. There was a national uproar, with the drawing being denounced as fixed. It would of course never have occurred to anyone to denounce a non-sequential series as fixed.

So works the human mind.

Years ago I was present at the drawing of a charity raffle. A little unusually for a raffle, there was only one prize - a piece of artwork valued at a couple of grand that had been donated. They'd sold thousands of tickets; not the plain cloakroom tickets, but the printed books of 10 kind.

All the tickets were put in some large tombola drum and spun like the end of a cotton cycle. A guy I knew was picked to draw the one and only winner, so no chance of any collusion or anything being rigged. Out it came. Ticket number 1.

Cue cries of 'fix' amongst lots laughter and comments. Of course, 1 had exactly the same chance of being drawn as any other number, yet it seemed so improbable. Had, say, 376 been drawn, nobody would have thought any more about it.

[lardy]

Years ago I was present at the drawing of a charity raffle. A little unusually for a raffle, there was only one prize - a piece of artwork valued at a couple of grand that had been donated. They'd sold thousands of tickets; not the plain cloakroom tickets, but the printed books of 10 kind.

All the tickets were put in some large tombola drum and spun like the end of a cotton cycle. A guy I knew was picked to draw the one and only winner, so no chance of any collusion or anything being rigged. Out it came. Ticket number 1.

Cue cries of 'fix' amongst lots laughter and comments. Of course, 1 had exactly the same chance of being drawn as any other number, yet it seemed so improbable. Had, say, 376 been drawn, nobody would have thought any more about it.

Wasn't this in Father Ted?