2000 Today

Yes, but the Euromillions raffle is a slightly unequal comparison.

With Euromillions, it's drawn by computer, under the beady eye of the 'independent adjudicator. From what I know, all 4 letter and 6 number codes that the terminal spits out when it prints the Euromillion tickets are loaded into a glorified excel spreadsheet, and random number is chosen and which cell it stops on, is the winning millionaire raffle winning code. No balls in a tumble dryer drum.

The NYE 2000 draw was different. That had balls in the lottery draw machines, so in all the pre-draw advertising that for every 1 million tickets sold, would make a millionaire for the turn of the millenium, so that, for instance there were say 3.4 million tickets sold, you would have to insure that somehow there were 3 and only 3 winning millionaire tickets that matched the numbers drawn out of the machine- otherwise it wouldn't just be Mr Winton, with a slightly embarrased look on their face.

I'm not saying the draw was totally rigged - but with that 1 millionaire per 1 million tickets sold advertising line, does mean that there had to be some form of manipulation at some point during that nights draw sequence.

Why? The numbers for that game were pre-selected, so all you had to do was ensure that the numbers allocated to each entrant were evenly spread - for each million tickets sold, you put all one million combinations out to the tickets.

Yes, and if it was a six digit number (one number for all winners rather than different numbers for each winner) there may have been a bit of a gamble on whether 3 or 4 people would win if 3.4m tickets were bought, but that would be a gamble Camelot would be willing to take.

There was a little behind the scenes tech doc on Music Live but I can’t find it now. Daily Motion I think.

Here's the Perfect Day performance, which is pretty grim:



There was a comment on that video once from one of the engineer who explained how it was all kept in sync - I can't remember the precise details, but it was all very clever!

Not wanting to turn this into the Music Live thread (as we're going a bit wildly off topic!) here's a few clips found of the day.

Here's a terrible singing contest... which just goes to show the calibre of entertainment to stretch out the day. It's hosted by the unlikely pairing of Baby Spice and Pip Schofield in his dyeing days.



And the even more unlikely pairing of Patrick Kielty and Rolf Harris (warning!) introducing a stadium based Top of the Pops with Jamie Theakston and Chris Moyles.

I’d forgotten those TOTP titles with more than a nod to the past (for no particular reason given it was an hour of current chart music).

They passed me by completely. Very trippy.

Rolf Harris at the beginning and end, how unfortunate.

The late Stephen Gately in the first clip too, reminds us who we've lost over the last 20 years. Well before their time.

I didn't think it was all that bad. Mainly because I saw Steps, who I love.

The worst person to be, if I was to be anyone, would be the choirboy at the end.

It wasn't amazing, but it wasn't as awful as I expected. And I watched it, just I can't remember it from 20 years ago

I'm still heartbroken over Steven Gately's death. I watch Ab Fab every now and again, and he appears in the first episode of series four.

I'm still pissed off about that bloody woman from a certain newspaper implying that he died of "gay lifestyle. "

Sad to see today all these years later someone being forced to come out in the papers because they'd been approached by a "journalist".