The pile of coins on the table at the front door stood as a monument to millionaire dreams.
Thursday nights were defined by Top of the Pops and fantasies of becoming one hit wonders on the football pools.
The letterbox would rattle at about 8pm and there stood pools agent Mr Harkins, gatekeeper to all our glorious hopes.
It cost 27p to perm eight from 10 on a single line and the old man would study the form guide in Record Sport like Christopher Columbus plotting his course across the Atlantic.
If the stars aligned above Cowdenbeath, Carlisle, Crystal Palace and Cardiff, then it was Disneyworld for our holidays, not Dunoon, and life would be endless Chinese takeaways instead of carefully rationed oven chips.
Suffice it to say, we never were on first name terms with Mickey Mouse and McCain continued to rule the roost, not Mandarin cuisine, but the pools still enjoyed a long-term hold on our affections.
In truth, as much as those carefully balanced coins bought a shot at the big time, the reality is they were funding a 48-hour dream.
The pools offered a chance for many families, including my own, to elevate themselves from a working class environment that didn’t always reward hard work and endeavour.
Unemployment, low pay and poor housing were the obstacles to upward mobility that could be erased by 16 strokes of a bookie’s pen.
King John didn’t sign the Magna Carta with the same care and attention as the trembling hand that was occasionally allowed, under strict parental supervision, to decree that Forfar would draw at East Fife.
It was a case of X marks the spot before James Alexander Gordon acted as a personal tour guide, leading us towards Treasure Island late on the Saturday afternoon with his soothing tones on Grandstand.
He turned reading the football scores into an art form. Like Olivier as Hamlet, only the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune were fired from venues such as Dundee United and Doncaster Rovers, not Denmark.
An occasional win of £20 or £30 would keep us believing we could one day join the real victors, those with their head shots and beaming smiles at the top of the coupon declaring “Mrs V from Lancs won £873,907”, or “Mr K from Sussex won £762,032”.
We did have Scottish winners including former Aberdeen striker Harry Yorston, who made over 200 appearances for the Dons and was even capped for Scotland.
He gave it all up at the age of 28 for a more lucrative job in the Buckie fishing industry but really struck it rich in 1972 when he won £175,000 on the pools. The record jackpot, £3,001,511, was won in 2010 by prison officer Michael Elliott from Brechin, who scooped the prize from a stake of just £2.
He predicted eight 2-2 draws in Scottish, English and Spanish football, bagging his bumper payout in predictably humble circumstances when Clitheroe drew with Fylde in the Evo Stick Premier League.
He said: “To say this is a life-changing experience would be the understatement of the year. I have played the pools for many years and have won three times before although my biggest previous win was £32.”
It was the brainchild of John Moores, founder of Littlewoods pools, and such was its success, his company was quickly followed by Vernons, Zetters and Brittens.
Moores was a trailblazer but the initial public response was lukewarm – 4000 coupons were distributed outside Old Trafford before a Manchester United game but only 35 were returned.
Worse still, they printed 10,000 coupons soon after and took them to a big game in Hull and only one coupon was returned, throwing the whole operation into jeopardy.
Moores persevered, however, backed by a wife, who told him: “I would rather be married to a man who is haunted by failure than one haunted by regret.”
Within a decade, Moores was a millionaire and used the profits from the pools to set up Littlewoods stores across the UK.
At its peak, 10 million people played the pools in 1994 but competition from the National Lottery led to a decline as the population switched from a game of skill to one of numerical chance.
Still, the pools continues to be held in huge affection and created profiles and personalities that remain with us today.
Viv Nicholson is the greatest of all after vowing to “spend, spend, spend,” when her husband Keith won £152,000 in 1961, the equivalent of £5million in 2019.
She was as good as her word, with most of her fortune gone within five years on trinkets, travel and turbo-charged cars, including a pink Cadillac.
Top of the Pops may have gone, kind Mr Harkins has long since retired and these days, the old man is marking his eight from 10 from inside the Pearly Gates.
However, the pools endure, offering its dreams and a delightful distraction and always sealed with a X.
