“We were very close friends and the last thing we imagined was ending up in court in the event of one of us winning the Big One,” he said.So when Mr Pitt was informed that he had won pounds 1.8m from his individual ticket the other three sent him a congratulations card and eagerly awaited their cut.Mr Sullivan told the court that when he approached Mr Pitt at work to remind him of the alleged agreement and hint at payment, Mr Pitt said he had not won enough to give out money to them. The alleged agreement would ensure the other three got pounds 25,000 each from the winner’s takings. No formal contract was drawn up.Mr Foulds told the court the members of the syndicate did not see any need to draw one up. They are suing him for breach of contract arising from an alleged oral agreement and are claiming pounds 25,000 damages each.The three told the court yesterday that as members of the Four Syndicate, as they were known, they filled in a joint coupon each week but also entered individual slips.Covering these individual coupons, the plaintiffs allege, was a “verbal gentleman’s agreement” sealed by the shaking of hands, although Mr Pitt’s counsel, Crawford Lindsay QC, argued there was no such agreement.According to Mr Foulds, the Four Syndicate had verbally agreed to split any individual coupon win of pounds 1m or more – a sum the syndicate referred to as the Big One. MATTHEW BRACE

A friendship between four workmates who formed a pools syndicate with an understanding to share any winnings was shattered when one of them won almost pounds 2m and refused to give any to his friends, it was claimed yesterday.
Paul Pitt, a forklift truck driver, and his colleagues Martin Foulds, 28, Andrew Sullivan, 30, and Graham Ware, 32, all from Portsmouth, worked together in a local distribution centre and played the pools each week.Yesterday, Mr Pitt faced his former friends across the benches of Portsmouth County Court, following a claim for damages by the other three. Copies of the documents will be released today but many names have been blacked out and the originals will not be made available..

Government documents to be released today will reveal that a mixed bag of public figures had key roles in an under- cover war anti-Soviet propaganda campaign. Papers released by the Public Record Office show that the poet Stephen Spender, the philosopher Bertrand Russell and the traitor Guy Burgess were involved in the campaign against the Stalinist Soviet Union in the 1940s and 1950s.
A report in The Times newspaper says the covert unit, secretly financed by the Secret Service Intelligence budget, also used contributions by Denis Healey, who later became Chancellor of the Exchequer.The revelations come as the Public Record Office prepares to release documents detailing the activities of the Foreign Office’s Information Research Department. There was no way either of us would have endangered our lives.”She added: “I honestly think that the police lost control of the situation. They knew what we did but they allowed us to do it.”Michael Mansfield, QC, for the Phipps family, had earlier accused Chief Inspector Richard Dinsdale of Warwickshire police of “gross negligence” in allowing the truck’s convoy to continue when Miss Phipps and at least eight other protesters were attempting to stop its progress by sitting on the road and attempting to chain themselves to it.He said the public order situation was “clearly unsafe”.The inquest was adjourned until today.. The lorry rolled on to her stomach and rolled her on to her back a few feet.”Pamela Brown, a close friend of Miss Phipps, who stood alongside her on the demonstrations against live exports, denied that the young mother would have martyred herself for the cause, and said: “She had everything to live for.”Ms Brown was asked if Ms Phipps had ever suggested that ultimately she wanted to die for the cause “No way It’s complete rubbish Jill had everything to live for She had just got a new house She had her 10-year- old son Luke – everything. I was just about to grab her and I wouldn’t describe her as falling.”He told the Coventry hearing into the death of Miss Phipps, 31, on 1 February this year, that he stopped the Scania truck when it was on top of her body by banging on the passenger door.In his statement after the tragedy, Const Toms had said: “It was my opinion she was doing this not to go away from the wagon but to purposefully position herself in front of the wheel. My intention was to go back and do the same with Miss Phipps.

As I was turning back I then saw her lie down on the ground.”She then turned and lay on her back and shuffled under the lorry – positioning herself underneath it at right angles with her stomach directly underneath the wheel.”It was my opinion from what I recall that it was a purposeful motion I was approximately three feet away. He had just removed another protester from the path of the lorry when he noticed Miss Phipps.
“I was aware of another lady, who was Miss Phipps, who tried exactly the same thing – getting in front of the lorry with their hands on the front of it. But the census itself is evaded by some people who are hard to trace or reluctant to deal with officialdom, including some who were trying to avoid the poll tax in 1991.. A policeman told an inquest yesterday how he tried to stop Jill Phipps deliberately sacrificing her life by lying under the wheels of a moving lorry during an animal rights demonstration. Const David Toms said he was running alongside the convoy escorting the lorry, which was carrying veal calves, to the gates of Coventry airport. The proportion of voters “missing” is highest in London, averaging 11 per cent against the national average of 5 per cent.