HOW would you feel if you won £800,000 on the stated lottery, only to wake up: next morning to find that, your winning ticket had been declared null and void because of a "technical problem" with the machine that spits out the winning numbers?

For one or more, as yet unidentified, citizen(s) from the little town of Jesi, not far from the Adriatic coast, that question is not academic. It" happened, just last week. One day, he/she/they were the lucky winner off the fifth prize in one of the biggest lotteries of the year. Next day, "niente" (nothing).

The extraction of the winning numbers in the annual "Lotteria Italia della Befana" is held every year on January 6th, a national holiday named after "La Befana", a mythical witch like figure who until the recent arrival of a certain Signore S. Claus from Nordic parts represented the true source of presents during the Italian child's Christmas.

La Befana is one of the biggest holidays of the Italian year, a family occasion marked by presents to their children and a large meal usually followed by a ritual of the family sitting around the TV to watch the lottery draw. This year Italians tuned in for the draw and probably half that number noticed the dreadful moment when the lottery machine went wrong.

The problem was that neither the TV presenter nor, more importantly, the members of the Lottery Commission gathered in the studio, noticed. While millions of viewers could see all too clearly that four balls had stuck in the "funnel" leading to the rotating drum, those in the TV studio went ahead with the draw, unaware that the winning (number for prize five had been drawn from a drum which contained six and not the regulation ten balls.

Within minutes, the switchboards of both the state television channel RAI and the Monopoli di Stato, the state lottery, were jammed with furious citizens (none of whom, doubtless, had a winning ticket) complaining that the draw had been at best erroneous and at worst illegal. In the meantime, it was revealed that the winning ticket, according to the faulty drum, had been bought in Jesi, near Ancona.

Twenty four hours later, however, the ticket from Jesi was no longer a winner. Having watched slow motion replays of the "technical incident", the minister for finance decreed that the fifth prize could no longer be awarded to the ticket from Jesi but should rather be handed on to the holder of the first ticket to have won a £75,000 "consolation"

At this point, all hell broke loose. Several MPs drafted questions in parliament; the minister for finance appointed a commission of inquiry the Italian consumers associations called for the entire draw to be held again; the holders of the tickets for the other nine balls in (or not in) the faulty drum formed a committee in order to sue the state; the anonymous winner(s) of the annulled ticket, Serie U 527243, discreetly contacted lawyers, also with a view to impending legal action; independent legal experts spent the week in furious debate as to whether the faulty machine, and the so called "technical incident", could or could not be considered within the confines of sporting chance and lottery hazard.

No one should be too surprised at the fuss. Gambling, be it on football or scratch cards or the national lottery, is a long established Italian obsession. Trying to score "13" by correctly predicting the results of 13 selected soccer matches every Sunday afternoon is such a sacred ritual that it affects the entire nation's roads network as millions of Sunday day trippers wait until they have heard the soccer results before setting sail (having lost again) for home.

Figures for 1994 show that Italians wagered a staggering £7 billion (approximately) a week on football pools, horse racing, scratch cards and bingo combined. Last week's Befana lottery mishap was hardly likely to go unnoticed.

So what happens now? Spokespersons for the state lottery told The Irish Times this week that all those who held winning tickets in the Befana lottery, apart from the controversial fifth prize of course, would receive payment in the usual (rather slow) manner.

As for the contentious ticket, that could be a long drawn out affair.

The ministerial commission has yet to begin its work, and it could be months - even years - before a legal resolution is found.

THOSE disappointed "Serie U" ticket holders who want; to take legal action against the state would do well to consider the experience of 90 citizens from villages in the Alpine foothills near Bergamo. Last May, they thought that Christmas had arrived seven months early when every second or third scratch card bought at local newsagents proved a winner.

In a frantic three day period, the inhabitants of the villages of Curno, Arcene, Olmo Al Brembo, Villa D'Alme, Dalmine, Ponte San Pietro, Paladina and Mapello won at least £4.6 million, if not much more.

The villagers' windfall, of course, had been the fruit of another "technical incident". A mischievous gremlin in the state lottery's printworks had directed all the winning tickets in a particular batch of scratch cards to one geographical area, rather than distributing them all around Italy.

For three days everyone in the Bergamo hills was a winner. At the time, the state lottery promised that all winning scratch cards would be honoured. Nine months later, no one has been paid. The people from the Bergamo hills, however, have not abandoned hope and they, too, have formed a committee which last week claimed that "victory" (i.e. payment) was just around the corner.

Lotteries, of course, can bring out the worst in people. There is no disputing the winning number of the first prize in last week's Befana lottery Serie B 815799. What is at: dispute, however, is who gets the £2.8 million.

The winning ticket was held in the name of Luciano Petrucci, who had been commissioned to buy £35 worth of tickets for himself, two brothers in law and one sister. All four were gathered around the TV on Befana night last week as the winning ticket was announced: "I've won", shouted an ecstatic Luciano.

"Hang on, we've won," replied the family gathering.

"Ah no, I bought that winning ticket on my own count, another time, and you lot aren't entitled to anything."

Needless to say, legal action setting members of the Pietrucci family against one another will follow shortly.