Westport artist wins big on Winning Streak

LUCKY STREAK Chris Harper Snr from Westport won 228,000 including a car on last Saturday’s National Lottery Winning Streak Game Show. Pictured here at the presentation of the winners cheques were, from left: Nuala Carey, Winning Streak co-host; Chris Harper Snr, the winning player and Meabh Gleeson, the National Lottery. Pic: MacInnes Photography

Third stroke of Lottery luck for Kilsallagh family

An artist living just outside Westport won a cool €28,000 when he appeared on the National Lottery Winning Streak TV game show last Saturday, March 7.
Chris Harper Snr won a Renault Zoe car, worth €25,000, on the very first game, and went on to win a further €3,000 in cash from the show.
Chris and his wife, Gaye, live in their Kilsallagh home, which he describes as ‘halfway up Croagh Patrick’, overlooking the bay and Westport town.
Originally from Bristol, Chris met Gaye, a Laois native, when she was working in the UK. The couple moved to Ireland in 1964 and opened a coffee shop in Mountrath, the midway town between Dublin and Limerick and near Gaye’s birthplace.
Chris has a chequered working career, with many pivots and changes – he has worked for Rolls Royce, in an advertising agency and running a coffee shop. He also established a sign-making company, which is now run by his son Chris Jnr in Westport and is now called MySign.ie.
Chris is retired from everything now bar his painting, and he is well known in the local area as a prolific artist who specialises in oils. He has his own gallery in Kilsallagh. When it opened in 2011, Mary Kennedy travelled up and did a feature on him for the popular RTÉ show, Nationwide. To date, Chris has painted between 400 and 500 hundred oil paintings. He is often found on his veranda painting, overlooking the picturesque setting of Westport and Croagh Patrick.
He also a father to three adult children (Nicola, Michelle and Chris Jnr), grandfather to ten grandchildren and a great-grandfather to six great-grandchildren. Many of these were in the RTÉ audience on Saturday evening, cheering Chris on.

Hat trick
National Lottery game shows are not new to the Harper household. Gaye went on another Lottery show back in July 2008 – the Big Money Game, presented by Laura Woods, and she won a cool €39,250.
Back in 1998, both Chris and Gaye won seats on the National Lottery Concorde trip to Paris, on which Marty Whelan was also a passenger.
Chris describes this third dollop of luck as ‘an amazing boost to the whole family’. He says that he will enjoy his winnings a lot more now he is retired, and is looking forward to a big day out with his family.
Winning Streak is on a break next weekend due to the St Patrick’s Day Bank Holiday weekend, but it will return to RTÉ One on Saturday, March 21.