THE future is certainly looking brighter for ten mobile phone technicians after their syndicate scooped £300,777 on the National Lottery.

They matched five numbers plus the bonus ball in the Lotto draw on Wednesday, July 9.

Among the lucky winners were Peter Thorns, Mark Hindle, Andrew Lamb, Martin Calloway, Mark Robinson and Philip Hodgson. The others in the syndicate did not want to be named.

All ten work for Orange in Darlington and syndicate leader Peter Thorns, 53, a technical product manager, did not discover the win until five days after the draw when he checked the numbers on the National Lottery website.

He said: "As soon as I typed in the first line of numbers, it came up that we had matched five numbers plus the bonus ball.

"At first I couldn't take it in and thought that I'd typed in the wrong numbers, so I asked some of my fellow syndicate members to check that I had done it correctly. Initially, we were in a complete state of shock and couldn't really take it all in."

After the shock wore off, Peter immediately tried to contact other members of the syndicate to tell them the good news.

He also didn't let the winning ticket out of his sight before handing it to his wife for safe-keeping.

The syndicate has already started to plan how to spend their windfall, with gadgets such as new computers, digital cameras and plasma screen televisions high on their list of priorities.

Syndicate member Mark Hindle, 30, who is Peter's stepson, is using his share of the winnings to pay for driving lessons and a new car.

The syndicate has been playing Lotto since it began and the members select their own numbers from a range of birthdays and anniversaries.

Even though the syndicate has struck it lucky this time, they have no plans to give up playing the Lotto.

The winning ticket was bought in Bristol and the syndicate's winning numbers were 2, 7, 24, 31,35 and bonus number 18.

* Other big winners in Darlington have included mother-of-three Anita Wynn, a former care assistant at The Gardens nursing home who scooped £3.6m in 2001. Within a week of that JCB driver Barry Moss picked up £7.5m and last year, taxi driver Shirley Garbutt won nearly £2m.