IMAGINE the scene. Sat in front of the telly, lottery ticket in hand and all your numbers come out.Jackpot!This was (almost) the scenario on Saturday night for an Ipswich hairdressing salon syndicate which won £2,000 but so easily could have scooped £2 million jackpot.

By Lynn Abbott

IMAGINE the scene. Sat in front of the telly, lottery ticket in hand and all your numbers come out.

Jackpot!

This was (almost) the scenario on Saturday night for an Ipswich hairdressing salon syndicate which won £2,000 but so easily could have scooped £2 million jackpot.

Maurice Cordy-Ramsey owns Hairaisers in Carr Street and ever since the National Lottery began he and his staff have run a nine-person syndicate.

Apart from the odd tenner here or there, their numbers have not exactly come up trumps. But Saturday's near miss was so close to netting them the big one that they feel that's as lucky as they'll get.

Mr Cordy-Ramsey said he found out the easy way that the salon had got five numbers up when he was told the next day.

"But one of the girls, Jo-Ann actually sat there on the night and checked the numbers as they came out of the machine.

"She couldn't believe her eyes when she saw 03 roll out of the chute, we had all the other four numbers and then we got the sixth one right.

"But on closer look the 03 was really 30 and we didn't want that one. It was the wrong way round. Shame. We could have been sharing out £2million now."

Winning lottery numbers, were: 09; 24; 28; 30; 31; 40 with 49 as the bonus ball. Saturday's jackpot of £6.56m was shared by two winners.

Hairaisers' syndicate was one of 606 winners who netted £2,081 each.

The nearly winners at Hairaisers, were: Donna Birch, Maurice Cordy-Ramsey, Jo-Ann Saltonstall, Kirsty Lander, Danny James, Carol Hurd, Lindsay Connel and Gail VanMegan. The ninth person is a friend of the salon.

Mr Cordy-Ramsey said that his wife Jean tried to put the close call in to perspective by saying he would have "blown the lot in ten days."

"But what a wonderful ten days that would have been," he said.

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www.national-lottery.co.uk