Waikato mum from Ōhaupō wins $50,000 live on air in ZM’s 5 on Time competition

ZM hosts Carl Fletcher and Vaughan Smith were visibly shocked at the win. Photo / Instagram

New Zealand radio station ZM has been running its “5 on Time” competition for the past six weeks, with ZM hosts Carl Fletcher, Vaughan Smith and Hayley Sproull inviting listeners of their show to try their luck.

The goal was to hit the five-second mark exactly. Starting at $5000, the prize money kept increasing as listeners tried and failed to secure the winnings. However, eventually one ZM listener got lucky.

Jayne, 35, who lives in Ōhaupō in the Waikato and works in the transport industry, hit the jackpot today.

She’d tried ringing a couple of times during the past few weeks, and this morning - while baking muffins - she looked at the time and thought, she should try again. “They answered,” she says. “I thought I was just one of the back-up callers.”

Playing was pretty simple, she says. Jayne hit the 5.00 mark dead on, to the delight of hosts Fletcher, Smith and Sproull and producer Jared Pickstock.

They crew was intrigued by her strategy, with Jayne deploying one curious (and effective) trick to mark time.

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“My partner and I joked that if you got through you wouldn’t be able to count properly because of the slight delay,” Jayne tells the New Zealand Herald. “I figured when you’re on the phone to them you’d be feeling under pressure and go way too fast, so I thought what else could I use?”

She didn’t use a stopwatch or numerical counting. “I thought, the kids’ names would work.”

Whether this sweet strategy gave her some added luck, we’ll never know. But regardless, it worked, and she’s taking home $50,000.

How did her two kids, 6 and 9, feel about the win? “My youngest one didn’t believe me, she just turned around and had her breakfast.” Asked if her older child was angling for anything from the winnings, Jayne suggested a boat to go fishing.

It’s “absolutely” a life-changing amount of money, she says, and has come at a good time.

Jayne says they’re thinking about putting some of the windfall towards a wedding. She and her partner have been together 18 years. “We probably should get married,” she says. “I reckon we’d elope.”

Winning a prize like that live on air means it’s hard to keep the news under the radar. And Ōhaupō is “such a small town” she says it’s not really possible. “I think the kids would have gone to school and told everyone anyway.”