30 sec mobile Journalism- https://youtu.be/t5Xd0kLEq4I
“Just sheer disbelief to be honest”, states Lorraine Mcmullan who won the very first 12 at 12 competition on ITV’S show This Morning on the 8th of February 2023. A Ballycastle woman couldn’t believe what just happened to her as Holly Willoughby and Philip Schofield “where my idols and I love them and being on live with them was amazing, nevermind the money”.
It was the shows first one of these competitions and Lorraine couldn’t believe that her number was chose, “I only entered in that morning at 9am just for the sake of it, I couldn’t get over that my number was picked”.
When talking about her first response to the phone call Lorraine said that she was having her breakfast. “When they advertised the competition, 12 at 12, it was a brand new competition nobody had ever done it before so I just thought why not and I entered it” she stated.
While she was cleaning out the kitchen cupboards “I thought to myself that I haven’t even had breakfast and I happened to make a cup of coffee and sat down with my kit kat”, she had her phone sitting beside her “just as you do”
Lorraine was watching Philip and Holly ringing the number and “they said it is going to be a private number so if it comes up private answer”. In her living room, on her sofa Lorraine in the middle of eating a chocolate biscuit she got a call from a private number. “I can remember looking at my phone, shoving the biscuit in my mouth and just lifted the phone and said hello, as normal as you like”.
While watching the tv Lorraine saw Holly ask is that Lorraine, “I’m going oh my god, oh my god and it was at the point I got up to turn down the volume of the tv because I know from watching competitions in the past they tell you to turn down the volume as there is almost a 7 second delay between what they are saying on the tv and what you are watching”.
“They asked me what part of the county are you from, how embarrassing is this…. just outside of Ballycastle”. While Lorraine was saying this she was “hysterical” walking about her archway in her living room. However, her phone cut out during the first 10 seconds “so when you listen back I cut off at bally, but why would I not said I’m from Northern Ireland, you would think I was talking to Phil and Holly from Ballymoney, this was extremely funny”.
Getting into the actual competition “I had to pick 6 boxes each with numbers on them, so I choose my boxes and being in utmost disbelief I picked all the boxes with money in them as the rest of them had a towel, maybe a mug in them”. There was a large sum of money in each of the boxes that Lorraine picked that it resulted in her winning a grand amount of £7,500, “I was extremely lucky to say the least”.
After Lorraine got off the phone, “I never ran up them stairs as fast in my life”, she rushed up to tell her daughter Abigial who was in her room. “I was screaming, she came running out of her room and she was like what have I done now, she thought that I was about to tell her off, I wonder why!!”
Mother and daughter “wrapped out arms round each other and was bouncing at the top of the landing”. Keeping as calm as you could be she then rushed downstairs to message her family and “Abigail says would you be better ringing daddy first, so I rang Paul here at the bottom of the stairs and started screaming down the phone, he actually thought something was wrong however I told him no, I just won money on This Morning and then he started screaming to”.
“It was brilliant really exciting”
Lorraine is one lucky women!!
