Prize win with added sparkle

THE champagne corks popped when Argus reader Colin Dodd scooped £42,000 by winning our Cross the Ball competition.

The 68-year-old has been entering the contest since the Seventies but has never won more than about £20.

The cash has been building up at the rate of £500 a week for the past 18 months

When we broke the news to Colin he was dumbfounded but now the good news is starting to sink in.

The windfall means he and his wife, Jean, will not have to sell their semi-detached home and can look forward to a prosperous retirement.

The generous pensioner is also planning to give some of the money back to our charity appeal which will help some of the most needy people in Sussex.

But Colin obviously isn't going to let the cash change his life - instead of booking a luxury holiday or buying a new car, the retired civil servant said he planned to give his shed a good clean.

Decline and fall

There are few people living in Sussex who want to see yet more housing development.

The area is one of the most beautiful in Britain with its

downland, unspoilt beaches and beautiful woodlands.

But it's hard to take the comments of John Redwood

seriously when he talks about Sussex sinking into the sea from the weight of new development.

It all smacks of cheap political point scoring from a has-been Tory once famously described as the Vulcan.

Once again he has proved he is living on another planet.

A good egg

Trevor Fryer has been astonished by an Easter surprise

delivered by one of his chickens.

The bird had laid an egg measuring three inches long and two-and-a-half inches wide.

It may not be a world record but it's quite a coop.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.