FOUR ordinary Brits used their free spins in the same week — and between them ended up with two bungalows, a hovercraft, a boat that has never left the marina and a swan called Kenneth.
Somewhere in a laboratory in Geneva, a very tired man in a cardigan is looking at a graph and quietly saying “no” to himself over and over again.
He is a probability scientist. He has spent thirty-one years explaining to people that luck is not a substance, that it does not accumulate, and that it certainly cannot be stored in a caravan.
Last Tuesday, four people ruined his life.
Doreen, 74, and the kettle that changed everything
Doreen Kettleby of Skegness had eleven free spins on PlayOJO and absolutely no intention of using them.
“I only opened it because the kettle was going,” she says. “I’ve got a rule. One cup of tea, one look at the phone, then it goes back in the drawer with the batteries and the takeaway menus.”
The kettle takes ninety seconds to boil. Doreen used all eleven spins in eighty-four.
By the time the kettle clicked off, she owned a sum of money that her local bank manager described as “not really a number so much as a weather event”. She has asked us not to print the figure because her sister Marjorie “would be unbearable about it”.
What she will confirm is that she has since purchased: a bungalow, the bungalow next door, the strip of grass between the two bungalows, and a swan.
The swan was not planned.
“There was a man at the garden centre and he had a swan and I said ‘how much for the swan’ as a joke,” Doreen explains. “And he said a number. And I had the number. That’s the trouble with having the number. You just keep having it.”
The swan is called Kenneth. Kenneth has his own room. Doreen has since been back to the kettle four hundred times and has won nothing whatsoever, which she describes as “the correct amount, actually, and a relief”.
Big Kev and the hovercraft incident
Kevin Ollerenshaw — known throughout Dudley as Big Kev, and to his mother as Kevin — was in a queue at a garden centre when his free spins from Megaways Casino landed.
This is important. He was in a queue. He was holding a tray of bedding plants. He had, by his own estimate, “about four per cent of my attention available”. He gave it all four per cent.
What happened next has been described by three separate onlookers as “a noise I have never heard a grown man make in a retail environment”.
There are no odds. I’m not saying the odds are long. I’m saying I’ve checked, and there aren’t any.
Kev dropped the tray. Kev sat down on the floor of the garden centre. Kev remained on the floor of the garden centre for eleven minutes while a member of staff named Priya fetched him a chair, a glass of water, and eventually a second member of staff.
“I kept scrolling up and down,” Kev says. “Because I thought — right, there’s a decimal point somewhere and I’ve lost it. It’ll be in the corner. It’s got to be in the corner.”
It was not in the corner. Kev has since bought a hovercraft.
He does not live near water. He has been very clear about this. “That’s not the point of a hovercraft,” he says, with the weary patience of a man who has explained it many times. “A hovercraft goes on grass. Everyone knows that. That’s the whole thing about a hovercraft.”
He takes it to the garden centre. Priya has asked him to stop taking it to the garden centre.
Nia, the sea god, and the three-minute miracle
Nia Prydderch, 28, from Swansea, was on a night bus when her free spins on Ahti Games arrived. She was, she admits, “in a mood”.
“I’d had a day. I’d had one of those days where you get home and you can’t remember a single specific thing that went wrong but you’re furious.”
Ahti Games is themed around Ahti, the Finnish god of the sea. Nia did not know this at the time. She knows it now. She has a tattoo.
Three minutes into the journey — somewhere between the retail park and the roundabout with the confusing exit — Nia won an amount of money that she can only describe as “sea god money”.
She stayed on the bus.
This is the detail that has captured the nation. Nia Prydderch, newly and catastrophically wealthy, remained on the night bus for a further twenty-two minutes and got off at her normal stop. “Well, I’d already paid,” she says.
She has since bought her mother a house, her brother a van, and herself “a boat, obviously, out of respect”. She has never sailed the boat. She sits on it in the marina and eats crisps. “Ahti gave me the money,” she says. “The least I can do is sit on a boat about it.”
Terry Bracewell and the gazebo of destiny
And then there is Terry.
Terry Bracewell, 56, of Portsmouth, was in Lisbon on a stag do that he describes as “medically ill-advised” when his free spins on BacanaPlay came through. He was, at the time, holding a commemorative gazebo.
Nobody has ever satisfactorily explained the gazebo. Terry cannot explain the gazebo. The groom cannot explain the gazebo. It appears in four photographs from that evening and in none of them does anybody appear to be questioning it.
Terry won on the second spin. He then won on the third spin. He then, and this is the part that made the tired man in Geneva put down his pen and walk into the sea, won on the fourth spin as well.
“I turned to Baz,” Terry says, “and I said: Baz. Baz. Something’s happened. And Baz said, mate, you’ve said that four times tonight and twice it was about a pigeon.”
- Doreen, 74, Skegness — eleven spins in eighty-four seconds. Two bungalows, the grass in between, and Kenneth the swan.
- Big Kev, Dudley — won in a garden centre queue. Sat on the floor for eleven minutes. Bought a hovercraft. Owns no water.
- Nia, 28, Swansea — won three minutes into a night bus journey and stayed on the bus. Owns a boat. Eats crisps on it.
- Terry, 56, Portsmouth — won on spins two, three and four while holding a gazebo. Bought the pub. Mounted the gazebo.
Terry has bought his local pub. Not shares in it. The pub. He has kept the entire staff, kept the prices exactly as they were, and made precisely one change: the gazebo is now mounted above the bar with a small brass plaque that reads SHE KNEW.
He has refused to elaborate on the plaque. “She knew,” is all he will say. “That’s between me and the gazebo.”
So what are the odds?
We put this to Professor Ignatius Mowbray-Frisk of the Institute for Things That Should Not Have Happened.
“There are no odds,” he said. “I want to be very clear. I’m not saying the odds are long. I’m saying I’ve checked, and there aren’t any. The number doesn’t exist. I’ve had to invent a new one and I don’t like it and I want it taken away from me.”
Asked whether the four winners had anything in common, Professor Mowbray-Frisk went quiet for some time.
“They were all,” he said eventually, “holding something. Doreen had a kettle. Kevin had bedding plants. Nia had a bus pass. Terry had — and I cannot stress enough how much I resent having to say this out loud in a professional capacity — a gazebo.”
He was asked whether he was suggesting a causal link. “I’m suggesting nothing. I’m a scientist. I’m simply noting that four people were holding objects and the universe fell over.”
Where are they now?
Doreen and Kenneth the swan have reached what she calls “an understanding”. Big Kev has been banned from a second garden centre.
Nia has still not sailed the boat. She has now eaten crisps on it forty-one times. And Terry Bracewell stands beneath the gazebo every Thursday, pulls a pint, looks up at the plaque, and says nothing at all.
Four ordinary people. One extraordinary week.
The luckiest four humans who have ever lived — and not one of them, when asked what they’d do differently, could think of a single thing except Kevin, who says he’d have put the bedding plants down first.
This article is a complete fabrication written for laughs. Doreen Kettleby, Kevin Ollerenshaw, Nia Prydderch, Terry Bracewell, Professor Mowbray-Frisk, Baz, Kenneth the swan and the gazebo are all invented. No such wins occurred. Nothing here reflects anything real about any casino, and nothing here should be taken as any indication of what anybody might win. Gambling is not a way to make money. 18+ only. If it’s ever not fun any more, BeGambleAware.org.