East Yorkshire weekly the Driffield Times beat the nationals and hit the circulation jackpot thanks to the town’s £18.2m National Lottery win.

Reporters sprang into action after an early morning tip-off on edition day that a team of checkout operators from the local Tesco store had struck lucky.

And in two hours they had gathered the names and telephone numbers of seven of the 11 winners and put together an eye-catching splash.

Editor Dennis Sissons said the resulting front page was a fantastic team effort from everyone on the editorial floor.

He said: “You dream of stories like this, especially during the silly season, and we went all-out to capitalise with a great front page.

“We had everything in the bag before the nationals had even heard that the Tesco team had won.

“And to top it all off we gained a circulation increase for the week of 11 per cent.”

In addition, the company’s Friday paper, the Driffield Post, carried stories and pictures from the official press conference called by Camelot and its circulation went up and broke through the 5,000-barrier for the first time.