Island Life Magazine Ltd October/ November 2012 | Page 56

INTERVIEW

winners a couple of times a year
to meet one another in similar
circumstances. They also encourage
big winners just to ‘get away from it
all’ for a couple of weeks, rather than
make hasty promises or commitments.
Afterwards financial advice is always at
hand.
But at the end of it all it is up to the
winner to decide what to do – just
walk away or continue to be part of
the ‘Camelot family’, as Dianne calls
it. She added: “I think it is one of the
best jobs in the world being a winner’s
adviser – giving people very good
news.”
Inevitably there have been a few
attempted scams, including retailers
who have checked a ticket, told
customers it is not worth anything,
and then tried to cash it in themselves.
But Camelot’s tight security virtually
always ensures the fraudsters are
caught.
“There was one such case when a
worker in a superstore kept a ticket
and tried to cash it in. He was caught,
and we managed to track down the
lady who had bought the ticket
through a till transaction. She had
a pleasant surprise when one of our
advisers knocked on her door and told
her she had won a million,” smiled
Dianne.
Since the Lottery began, Camelot
have raised £28billion for good
causes, with some £44million of
lottery funding having come to the
Island, with Quarr Abbey, Brading
Roman Villa, Yarmouth Pier and IW
Zoo among the beneficiaries. The
Lottery also contributed a staggering
£2.2billion towards the cost of the
London Olympics.
One of Dianne’s first associations
with the Island came in the early
1990s when she worked as a marketing
director for Signet, owners of Ratner’s
jewellers. She was part of the team that
tried to save the company after owner
Gerald Ratner infamously revealed his
goods were cheap because they were
‘crap’, and claimed the only difference
between an M&S prawn sandwich and
the earrings he sold for £2.99 was that
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the sandwich would last longer!
“I was looking for somewhere to go
for a couple of days to sort out the
strategy to save Ratner’s, so we came to
the George Hotel in Yarmouth to do
two days’ solid work, but did the lot in
eight hours because the Island was so
inspiring,” she recalls. Now Dianne has
a home in Yarmouth and ‘escapes’ here

as often as she can.
After the Ratner’s saga, which overall
took Dianne three years to sort, she
was head-hunted to join Camelot in
1996, two years after its launch. As
someone who likes a ‘trouble-shooting’
challenge and could see nothing
wrong with Camelot, she was initially
reluctant to take the step. However,
she made the move and within two
years the Lottery was in decline and
Camelot was hit by controversy,

including ‘fat cat’ rows.
Then in 2000 came another
potentially huge hammer blow when
Camelot lost the UK licence to
Richard Branson’s Virgin. Dianne
recalls: “We lost, but our regulator
said neither bid was good enough;
there were flaws in both, so they were
stopping the competition. They gave
one bidder the opportunity to improve
the bid, and that was Richard. So we
were out – finished!
“But we decided to fight the decision
because otherwise it would have meant
the end of our business with 800 jobs
at stake. We won the judicial review
which meant the regulator had to give
us both a month to improve our bids,
and this time we won.”
Dianne immediately stepped up from
commercial director to become chief
executive, taking up her new role on
December 19, 2000. Inevitably Dianne
has seen massive changes during
her time at Camelot. The lottery
got back into growth in 2003, with
Camelot constantly looking for ways
of refreshing the interest and keep
consumers interested. Now Lotto is the
biggest single product across the UK,
with Scratch Cards, Thunderball and
Euro Millions also in the top 10.
Before joining Camelot, Dianne used
to play the lottery. She still has her
ticket from the first ever draw, hoping
it would be worth something one day.
Alas, millions of others also kept their
tickets from that first draw. In her CE
role, she is not allowed to play the
lottery. She looked at me and with a
big smile she said: “No, it can’t be me
– but it could be you!”