A MARVELLOUSLY lucky punter had a miraculous win of money after making the decision to only bet on horses whose names began with M.Colin Appleby from Holbrook was on his lunch break from work last Wednesday when he placed a £6.

A MARVELLOUSLY lucky punter had a miraculous win of money after making the decision to only bet on horses whose names began with M.

Colin Appleby from Holbrook was on his lunch break from work last Wednesday when he placed a £6.30 bet which raked him in £151,631 winnings in what he described as an “amazing turn of events.”

It was only because the 55-year-old is no longer allowed to smoke in the grounds of the Ipswich Hospital where he works as a post room co-ordinator that he says he won the cash.

Mr Appleby, of Five Acres, said: “It is getting colder now so instead of standing on the pavement and having a cigarette I thought I would go and buy some dog food which I needed because we were running out.

“When I got to the shop it was on special offer so I had £10 left from the money I had set aside for it and decided to go in the betting shop, have a cigarette and see if there was anything I fancied putting a bet on. It is amazing to think if it hadn't been cold, I hadn't wanted a cigarette and we hadn't run out of dog food I would never have won the money.”

Mr Appleby said his decision to place the accumulative bets on horses whose names began with M derived from his wife, Patricia, doing the same thing eight years ago while they were on holiday.

He said: “She doesn't really bet so didn't know how to choose them. But when all of her M horses won I decided to borrow the technique.”

It was that evening when Mr Appleby checked the race results on teletext that he realised five of the six horses he had chosen had won.

If all six had come in first place he would have netted £758,159.

He added: “I got a calculator out to see if I could work out how much I had won but couldn't accept it was that much.

“We have no plans as for what to do with the winnings but I am going to take my wife out for a meal.”

The odds on the first five coming in were 1,050,191/1.

David Williams, spokesman from Ladbrokes, said: “It's our worst ever result from a small-stake bet.”