Manager Mark Hawkins was still in shock today after winning a top-of-the-range £62,000 Lotus sports car in a radio quiz, writes Roseena Parveen.

Mark, 35, told the Oxford Mail the win marked a dramatic upturn in his fortunes - it comes just weeks after his girlfriend was made redundant.

But Mark, currently driving a 14-year-old Nissan Bluebird, is turning down the chance to keep the Lotus Esprit - capable of a staggering 175mph top speed. He and girlfriend Andrea, 26, plan to sell it and use the proceeds to do up their newly-bought bungalow in Chilton, near Didcot.

But the lucky winner will get to play with the supercar once - he's being invited to take it for a spin at Lotus's test track near Norwich on March 1. Mark, who has twin daughters, aged six, said: "I'm still gobsmacked at the moment - completely over the moon.

"Andrea was made redundant and things were becoming quite worrying. We moved in September and it's been hard going as it's a big project converting the house.

"I still can't believe it. It's not going to change my outlook on life, but it's certainly going to make things a lot easier for us both."

Mark entered the competition, on Talk Sport radio, two weeks ago and was picked to compete in the final show-down yesterday. He fended off two competitors by being the only one to answer ten sports questions correctly. And amazingly the winning tenth question was about his favourite rugby team - Bath.

Mark said: "I've played with Bath Rugby Club's coach so I know the team - it was a real stroke of luck."

But Mark, who works as a commercial manager for a London company, admits the win was not as smooth as it might have looked. He said: "I swotted up the night before. I left work an hour early, bought all the newspapers and read through them with a highlighter.

"I read the Teletext pages while skipping through all the Sky Sports channels all night.

"I got up at 5.30am and bought the papers on the way to work. It paid off."

Story date: Saturday 12 February

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