£639,000 Platinum Bingo win is biggest ever prize at Exeter Mecca Club
26 May 2008

A part-time hospital admin assistant from Newton Poppleford has won more than £639,000 on the National Bingo Game’s Platinum Jackpot play-off.

“It just won’t register how much I have won and I am still in shock,” said the 64-year-old winner, who does not want to be named. “I had two or three medicinal brandies and woke up with a sore head this morning. Thank God it was Bank Holiday Monday and I could sit at home and try to come to terms with it.”

She was at the Mecca Club in North Street, Exeter on Sunday when she won a total of £639,725, the Club’s biggest ever prize pay-out.

This was made up of the Platinum Jackpot prize of £561,306; the Sunday evening National Game prize of £74,960; the Zone prize of £3,260 and the Club prize of £199.

The winner completed a full house in 45 numbers, the lowest call in any of the clubs playing nationwide

.“I joined the Mecca Club in 1993 and I drive two friends from the village to play bingo there every Sunday,” she said. “I had already won a £60 house earlier in the evening before hitting the jackpot. When I got home I showed it to my husband, who doesn’t play, and he was over the moon with that.

“Then I showed him the club prize and he was thrilled, followed by the claims form for the rest which just didn’t register. He thought it said £639.  When he realised there was also three noughts, he needed a brandy as well.”

She plans to buy him something he has wanted for a long time – a garden shed, ‘so he can get the mower out of the garage.’  The winner plans to change her car and added: “I am not sure what we will do with the rest apart from treating the family, but we will be sensible with it.”

She works at the Ottery St Mary hospital and her husband is retired. They have two sons and three grandchildren.