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One perpetual prop (or, as the bookmaker would have it, “Specialty Bet”) at Betfred is the Irish lottery lines. As a national draw is set for this coming Wednesday, a quick look at some Lotto propositions.

First off are the longshot occurrences. Got an extra tenner? Maybe you’ll be throwing it down on the following.

All numbers under 23: 50/1
All numbers over 23: 50/1

All numbers odd: 50/1
All numbers even: 60/1

A bit more than 1.37%, so even odds would be around 70/1 or so. Of course, anyone who bets this and hits the 50/1 odds won’t be complaining too much while he/she buys the next round.

At first glance, Betfred’s second set of lines seems a tad irrational until one recalls that there are actually 45 balls in play, so the ratio of odd numbers to evens is actually 23:22. This means that while an all-evens draw should happen about 1.37% of the time, an all-odds draw will pop up about 1.8% of the time, for actual odds of about 55/1.

And then there’s this one:

Bonus ball odd: 4/5
Bonus ball even: 10/11

Here, the odds are in the odd ball’s favor by a margin of just over 2.22%, so why a nearly 11% difference in payout? Go even!

To further whet your appetite for the big draw, below runs a clip from a bit of forgotten treasure of 1990s Irish film, the splendid dark comedy Waking Ned (or Waking Ned Devine in the US and international release), and a movie review – available online exclusively here at Live Bets Direct – written up in ’98 by yours truly when in the incarnation of film critic. Enjoy, and may the luck of the Irish be with you!

Waking Ned Devine isn’t meant to be ironic. I think. Or maybe it is, a kelly green-tinted version of heavenly derision straight out of a culture which routinely finds Samuel Beckett works worthy of paroxysms of laughter. Those wishing to pigeonhole this film under the stiff categorization of “black humor” – though there is much, ranging from a slapstick corpse-manipulation routine to gallows jokes aplenty – are missing the wood for trees.

With a cosmic opening sequence seemingly more at home in Contact, this Oyrish work distances itself from the high-concept premise (Cue the Alanis Morissette: “An old man / Turned 98 / He won the lottery / And died the next day / … / Isn’t it ironic?”) and into a concept of divine proportions. Here enters the significance of the title character’s family name, a homonym for to describe inexplicable events humanity cannot chalk up to mere coincidence.

It all begins on Saturday evening; a time period in which “the Universe is mostly the same” and yet planet Earth is in turmoil. For all over the world, televisions are watched, ping-pong balls are falling into place, and ultimately comes “an event which will undoubtedly change lives forever. The lucky sods.” So does village-dwelling Jackie (Ian Bannen) muse on beating 3,776,965,920/1 odds.

The next morning brings the lottery-obsessed Jackie and his best buddy Michael O’Sullivan (David Kelly) good news of a sort: Through clever deduction, the pair have surmised that fortune has smiled on someone in their village of Tulaigh Mhór (population a few dozen). Some giggle-inducing detective work later, our boys track down the ticket to Ned Devine, since made a member of The Choir Invisible.

Jackie’s first thought is – o, come on, you know what his first thought is. When informed of the award’s actual amount, justification comes to Jackie in 6,879,620 ways. A one-joke story, then? Hardly. For as soon as Jackie’s wife Annie (Fionnula Flanagan), Ned Devine’s moral center, utters “money changes a man,” surface concerns take a back seat. A most poignant question posed in this script is perhaps the simplest: What exactly would you do with seven million pounds or so?

If this were a Steve Martin offering, it’d be all downhill from here, thin lies and deception padding over thin lies and deception in a script with a three-chuckle maximum and a plethora of pratfalls. Director/writer Jones walks the path less traveled, painting a pastiche of colorful characters to add depth to a film he (correctly) sees to be as a snapshot of life’s little miracles; subplots flesh out Waking Ned rather than pad. Tulaigh Mhór’s masses include less-than-there little old ladies; a love triangle between a reputation-burdened yuppie, a pig farmer, and an unwed mother; said mother’s lonely son and the inexperienced priest he consoles; and the town witch.

Jones and company, meanwhile, have divined some real meaning in this innocuous wee thing. Sure, it’s uneven at times and draws unduly from stuff like The Englishman who Went up a Hill, but Waking Ned Devine’s heart and intelligence really beat the odds. And in this cinematic galaxy, these are simply…divine.

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