Coffee Cup Drummer
I once came on here to find I had an inbox message waiting for me from 'mike woz ere'. It read,
"Your video.
www.break.com/index/talented-coffee-cup-drummer.html

Please tell me you submitted this as it won $600."


He was right. Some of you amazing b3tans had spotted it and realised I'd posted in on the board a few days prior and spotted some foul play. After much emailing and paperwork I proved it was mine and won. Probably the only thing I've ever won and I didn't even submit it in to the compo. Some thieving yank did. Cheers b3ta! Would have been $600 poorer otherwise.
( Terry_Tibbs Coarse and violent nudity. Occasional language, Wed 4 May 2011, 15:37, 1 reply)

Anti sleeping device
I came second in a Radio One competition once. People were asked to text in with their suggestions for "punny" headlines for recent silly news stories. The story was thus:

A local inventor has come up with a device to stop tired drivers falling asleep on the road. It is a rubber duck that is hung around the neck - when the driver's head droops forward, it activates the device which emits a loud "quacking" noise, waking the driver.

The entry that won was "Have a break, have a quick quack" which I thought was rubbish compared to my considerably funnier, much snappier and all round downright BETTER suggestion of...



"Insomniquack"

LOLZ
(stewiegriffin, Wed 4 May 2011, 15:27, 3 replies)

I didn't win this time
My dog however did win a prize many moons ago. It was in the local village where I stayed as a nipper. The annual gala had a competition for the best dog. Nothing more complicated than that, not best looking or fastest. Simply the best dog wins.

He was less than a year old when this competition came round. He was friendly, scruffy and loved scavenging about the place looking for whatever he could. Unfortunately he was stubborn so was problematic to train. When I saw all the other fancy dan poodles jumping up to the judges and performing 'tricks', my hopes of him being crowned the best dog started to fade.

He was unperturbed however, in fact he was having a rare old time. He was patrolling the area giving each and every dog a ruddy good sniff. I tried to get him to pay attention to the judge but he couldn't care less.

Anyway, he went and bloody won the bastarding thing, 1st prize! The judge's simply said he was a 'proper' dog.

If there were to be a human equivalent, it would be the best human competition. All the prima donna dogs would be supermodels and jetsetters while my dog (aka Compo from Last of the Summer Wine) basically leers and charms his way over everyone.
(muzzvsworld, Wed 4 May 2011, 15:12, Reply)

I won beer (and didn't get my legs broken)....
...so I guess this counts.

(cue hazy, wavy Wayne's World style lines for a flashback).

Its 2004, my final year of Medical School and as is the rigorously enforced ritual of Fresher's Week, the entire course and most of the doctors who have graduated in the last seven or eight years are on the lash on Thursday of Fresher's week. Not just any lash, its pub golf with around five hundred and fifty people. This rite of passage is so engrained that there is a massive rush to book the following Friday off whenever anyone starts their jobs in August.

One of the better parts of it (copious amounts of booze, scantily clad birds and fresh meat unaware of what uni involves notwithstanding) is the annual fancy dress challenge. (I know what you're thinking, but stay with me for a while - I promise its worth it)

The freshers are told to come in "what they usually wear in bed" - basically its a safety mechanism so that everyone else can keep an eye on the tossers walking around a city centre in shitty pyjamas to make sure they're not murdered, raped or killed (or if they are it's at least by someone we know). I should probably explain at this point if we tried to do anything more subversive with them in the first week it would be doomed to failure - med students and doctors develop a very dark sense of humour, but it takes a while. Imagine a deer in headlights. With a small kitten for a hat. Holding a bunch of daffodils. For this is what our first year students are likened to. Final years however are more of the rabid, chainsaw wielding alcoholic venison-lovers who haven't eaten in three weeks.

So, general scene setting done, my group of mates comes up with several challenges but need an overlying theme. Fuck it, why not a bad taste contest, winner gets the beers bought for them for the evening by the lads. Sounds fair? Fucking right it does! With a week to prepare, a veil of secrecy that MI5 would be astounded by envelopes our group, with everyone trying to come up with the idea that will win them the coveted golden beer ticket. People start going through till receipts found in the washing machine to see where housemates have been shopping, internet histories are deleted as part of leaving your room for a piss and passwords are used for the first time ever in our computer network.

Of course the rumours start - Andy's managed to get a dead baby costume that was outlawed in the USA, Dave's been pulled in for questioning by police wanting to know why he has been searching for Wizard's outfit (as opposed to his usual google favourite, wizard's sleeve).... until the day arrives.....


I must admit I had an idea of what I would do - being in fifth year I had access to some medical supplies, and had some knowledge of gory makeup from a friend who did some casualty union stuff, but I knew that wouldn't be enough. I had to dig deep..... So Dave arrives at the first pub on time....of course we'd all agreed to let him and pitch up thirty minutes late so he could enjoy some quiet time by himself.......wrapped in a cotton sheet and a couple of rolls of cotton wool, covered in red food colouring and dragging a rope behind him. Yes, Dave had come as a used tampon and we had to bow to his superior knowledge of the subject matter when he called us all "complete cunts" for making him wait for the rest of us. Andy arrived in a priest's outfit with a doll tied to his crotch in a small cassock, and there were a few extras.

I however won the prize by arriving with a catheter connected to a catheter bag filled with pineapple juice and vodka just in case I didn't win and ran out of money. I also got bonus points for drinking from it at various points in the evening as it looked like a fucking horrendous urinary tract infection. Not content with this, I managed to blag a wheelchair and drip as well as a tracheostomy tube that I cut down and had a good go at some macerated flesh around it. Not content with this, I managed to secure the beer for the night (and a one-way ticket to Hell) by topping it all off with......




.....a superman outfit. About a week after Christopher Reeve finally succumbed to kryptonite poisoning.


So I won the beer! Happy days! Or not as the case may be.....for every once in a while a mature student starts with us. And every once in a while, those mature students are six foot four bodybuilders. With disabled relatives and short tempers..... So when I arrived at the second pub I get a couple of laughs from the people that know me and have developed the requisite sense of humour. However I also have a man-mountain steaming towards me, looking as though he will be making me his personal dissection project, starting by removing my testicles though my eye sockets.

"That's so fucking out of order... I'm going to take you outside and knock four shades of shit out of you, you sick fuck.....you're not fit to be a fucking human, never mind a doctor, what kind of sick fucking kicks are you getting out of this? What the fuck do you have to stay for yourself?"

Just like in the movies, the music stops, everyone looks around and a cold wind blows.... Now, I'm not exactly a five foot stick, but nor am I a steroided up leviathan with the temperament of a great ape with diarrhoea that has just had his last square of kleenex nicked. My mind started racing, looking for an emergency exit but I seemed to be surrounded. By this one bloke. Fuck!

"Bollocks to it," I remember thinking, "I'm going to get the shit kicked out of me so no matter what I say I can't make it worse......"









"Thanks for your concern about disabled rights mate, it means a lot to me seen as though I'm paralysed already...."











Cue a very sharp intake of breath from my mates (and a few other people who were watching and knew I was full of shit).... and Ape-man's face falling a mile.

"ohmygod I'msofuckingsorry......let me buy you a drink" so off he goes to the bar and comes back with a pint. Good lad, I think. Until I realise (after my cunt mates point it out to me) that I'm confined to a wheelchair for the next 17 pubs and the nightclub we're finishing in. And I need pushing around.



Fucksocks.




Ape-man is only too happy to help though, much to the amusement of my friends - especially when I need to go for a piss no-one will help me make a dash for it.

cunting arsewank


So, after managing to avoid getting killed, winning a beer ticket that I couldn't abuse in case I needed to piss more often than I was already going to need to, and being escorted to the bogs repeatedly by Chewbacca's larger, hairier brother, I unsurprisingly didn't manage to pull any freshers.

Did I win? Well, I still have my teeth, don't need a wheelchair and was bought beers by silverback most of the night, so on average I think I came out on top.


EPILOGUE: So the end of the night comes, we're all leaving the club and I need to get home so I end up wheeling to a taxi rank. Big man apologises (yet again) and wanders off, leaving me with a taxi driver who is scratching his head, figuring out how he's going to get a spastic dressed as superman into his car without picking him up and risking arse-gropage. I tell hime to wait a minute, savour the night air and try and work out the cramp from my now dead legs and plan my final escape. I have a 200 yard head start, tell the driver to open the boot and stand up, shouting to Donkey Kong "Cheers for the beers mate!" before collapsing the wheelchair into the boot, doing a passable impression of Christopher Reeve before the accident as I dive into the back seat of the taxi and tell the driver to floor it as the Barbary Ape chases us into the night, never to be seen again.

Or at least until a few days later when he didn't recognise me.


Overall, win.
(GlennQuagmire, Wed 4 May 2011, 15:03, 5 replies)

subterranean goldfish blues
When we were around 16/17 we went down to the fair and saw one of those "test your strength" attractions.

This wasnt one of those where you have to be a mustachio'd man in stripy long johns to win, it was a kiddies sized one. We dared our very serious, walked-around-with-arms-like-hes-carrying-two-carpet-rolls, more muscles than grey matter friend to have a go.

He paid the pound we gave him, picked up the "mallet" with a meaty paw and crashed down on the little wooden box. No ding, he had substituted aim for power and almost smashing the box in the process. So he tried a few more times, clipping the peg once, before the gypo running the stall shouted till he stopped, red faced and huffing.

The gypo gave us a goldfish to go away, we gave it to my mate bob and he put it in his tank with Humphrey (other fish). We named the new fish Mr Bojangles and he lived for about 10 years (i think).

Not bad for a quid
(Monkeystrumpet monkey. Monkey, MONKEY!!!, Wed 4 May 2011, 14:52, 3 replies)

Do i win anything
from B3TA for posting on my B3TA 4th Birthday?

Ive missed it everyyear only to realise I was late by 2-3days everytime.

This year I set alarms, Calendar reminders, post it notes.

I wasnt going to forget this time!

woo me.
(Dan dan dan They tik urh jerbs!!!, Wed 4 May 2011, 14:29, 8 replies)

Another goldfish one
Won two of the kids goldfish at last years fair when it came to town, so splashed out on a proper nice Bi-ube tank and all the gubbins (bloody expensive, fish are).

The fair was in town this year and I won another goldfish so off it went to home where it was quarantined for a week to make sure it was OK, then introduced to the tank with the local population. The kids aptly named it 'swimmy'

Came down one morning about 5 days later and one fish was AWOL, nowhere to be found. Swimmy was happily darting round the tank, though the other fish seemed lethargic and had taken to occasionally floating on the surface on his side. Then I noticed the bits on its skin. Ah crap.

Went shop and got all the anti velvet, anti whitespot and all that other crap. Drained the tank and got the two fish i could see out. Its then that I lifted the pirate ship model to find the missing fish floundering about underneath it. Fuck knows how it got under there, but it did. I rescued him and put him in temporary storage with the other two fish until the tank was flushed out, cleaned and the medication added.

All three were dead by next morning. Cue Kids hearts breaking and much crying. Never taking home fair goldfish ever again.
(shamen Geekius Maximus, Wed 4 May 2011, 14:13, 10 replies)

"First prize"
I have won the first prize in a draw only once. The result was so disenchanting, I rather lost faith in competitions.

I was six years old and the event was an open day at the base in Germany my Dad was stationed at. As the base was jointly operated with the US Army, some of the prizes had a mystique that was usually lacking in their UK only counterparts. One of the prizes was an electric go kart. The moment I saw it, I knew it had to be mine.

Formal pocket money was not something I had at six so I begged and cajolled my folks into parting with two marks- actually I got a mark out of each parent without making it strictly clear I had alreay asked the other one- giving me not one but two cracks at the toy of my dreams. I fritted away the afternoon being encouraged to play with various deadly weapons and Mum bought me an icecream, which as that stall was being operated by the US rather than the British Army was about the size of a wastepaper basket. Needless to say the sugar helped work me into a frenzy of excitement by the time the draw came around.

We worked through the low level stuff. I was almost glad I didn't win toy cars, a Thundercats tank let alone the Barbie house, to say nothing of the "grown up" stuff that was also on offer. I was in it for the go kart. Finally, this (electric) chariot of the gods was up.

I didn't win it.

Maybe it was that I had worked myself into a frenzy of excitement, maybe it was the sugar wearing off but it was all to much for me. I'm not ashamed to admit it- I cried. It was only by chance, I even listened to the announcer calling first prize. I still remember the number 694- one of my two tickets. I had won something deemed even better than the greatest thing in the world.

A tumble dryer.

Now, with 24 more years under my belt, I can appreciate that this was quality white goods. A Miele unit with the ability to dry virtually anything without harm. A truly excellent tumble dryer. But still something of no great use to a six year old who wanted a go kart. Tears still streaming down my face, I had to go up and "receive" (obviously they didn't hand me it- it was sort of a tumble dryer IOU) my prize. This served to remind me still further of the bitterness of my defeat as I saw another child about the same age as me take the go kart away. I was left with "my" tumble dryer and a sense of the wronged that lasted a very long time.

In fairness to my parents, they trod a fine line between the joy on their part of becoming the owners of a rather fine dryer and consoling their eldest who felt that fortune had stuck two fingers in his eyes. Being a Miele, the dryer survived for nearly twenty years which in many ways served to amplify my defeat still further.

I still don't like raffles.
(Leonard Hatred briefly did some work on, Wed 4 May 2011, 13:46, 4 replies)

Dadwin
My dad wins tonnes of stuff.

He does a lot of business with IBM and they put you into a raffle where the more orders you've put in the better chance you have of winning. In the past few years he has won (that i remember):

- Tickets to world cup final in Germany (which didnt turn up so they sat outside the stadium in a coach)
- Tickets to a group game in Euro 2008 (Portugal)
- A few days in the Maldives (in which it pissed it down the whole time)
- A Ipad
- A new portable DVD player
- A trip to South Carolina

While the final tickets didnt show up, him and the guy from work he took got £1000 compensation each! Even though he'd already had the all expenses paid trip to Germany! They watched the 2nd half in a hotel with all the coach drivers, pretty much had the bar to themselves....jammy sods

still, nice one dad
(Monkeystrumpet monkey. Monkey, MONKEY!!!, Wed 4 May 2011, 13:31, Reply)

pub quiz stupidity
A mate's team won the local pub quiz resoundingly, and no-one thought to ask why they called themselves 'team google' and all had their smugphones out on the table
(teasus likes tea, Wed 4 May 2011, 13:29, 6 replies)

I'm currently...
...the reigning Skullfunk pool champion.

Kneel before me!
(Professor Kenny Martin Hmm? What?, Wed 4 May 2011, 13:23, Reply)

A fete worse than death
My parents are quite heavily involved with the village fete (I tend to find an excuse to be out of the country so I don't get roped in), and one year, when collecting prizes, they were given a rather tasteless serving plate (with sculpted frogs and lily pads on the rim). The guy who gave it to them asked them to not say where it was from, since his wife had bought it and he hated the thing.

(you can see where this is going)

So the day of the fete comes, the raffle is drawn, and a lady comes up to pick her prize.

"Ooh, I got my husband one of these, now he'll have a matching pair!"
( Tedium Alduce me to interlow myself., Wed 4 May 2011, 13:04, 2 replies)

slightly spooky giant panda win
bollocks this was probably about 20 years ago now. That makes me feel old!

I was standing chatting to some friends while nearby some crappy street fair/market type thing was going on, which had a tombola store. Among the prizes was a very large cuddly panda. Suddenly and without warning, I broke off from the conversation and said 'oh excuse me I'm just going to go and win that giant panda over there'. I then went over to the stall, said 'oh I'll have the giant panda please' and reached in, picked out the ticket for the giant panda, thanked the surprised stall guy and walked off with the panda, which I had no use for and I ended up leaving it in my friends garage until it went mouldy.

I still don't really know what to make of that. I do seem to win school raffles etc whenever I enter, and I have bought a total of 5 lottery tickets in my life and won a bit more than what I spent on them each time - I think the sum total came to £40 after spending £5

Maybe I'm a little tiny bit magical or something, just not enough to be of any actual use. It'd explain why I'm no good at anything else...
(teasus likes tea, Wed 4 May 2011, 12:45, Reply)

I'm rather good at the game that ofter appears at school fetes,
where you push a 2p down a ramp and land it on a chequered board. Of course, all you win is more 2ps, but it kept me entertained at many a school fete when I was a boy.

Similarly, those machines in arcades, where you put 2p in the slot in the hope of pushing of more 2ps from the moving platform. You won't make any real money, but you can usually find a neglected 2p that someone has left behind in the prize bucket, and thus have a free afternoon's entertainment*. The 10p ones are evil, though, particularly if they have prizes sitting on top of the money, as this just serves to hold it all in place.

*Disclaimer: you may not find this game to be entertaining.
( monster munch person, man, woman... camera... TV?, Wed 4 May 2011, 12:01, 1 reply)

The only significant thing I've ever won
Was the great egg race against several million other possible individuals.
(ParaSitius is an Optimistic Pessimist, Wed 4 May 2011, 11:50, 11 replies)

Published comedy author
Below reminded me. I had the following joke published in Maxim in 1998. I remember the year because it was the only year I lived in that flat that they delivered the crate of beer to.

Why is the gap between a woman's chest and hips called a waist?

Because you could easily fit another pair of tits in there.


Not exactly my proudest moment.



I also had a joke published in Empire in about 1995 or so. My memory tells me that I invented this fucking joke, but my memory may be wrong if anyone can find evidence of it existing earlier. I can't remember the month it was published, but the previous month the spine quote was from Bad Boys. ("...and a bag of blueberry skittles") because I recognised it and mentioned it in the same email.


'Dear Empire,

I can scarcely believe this rumour is true, so I am turning to you for confirmation. Are they really making an action film based on the lives of the great composers? I ask because I heard that Stallone would be playing Mozart, Van Damme playing Strauss and that Schwazenneger* was quoted as saying "I'll be Bach"'


Apparently it 'caused a right old chortle round the office, that one'.


I was prouder still when I received the same joke back to me in a stupid chain email just last summer.






*they may well have had to tidy up my spelling of Schwazenneger, I have no idea really.



EDIT: And I just remembered my text in Metro.


Someone has written about seeing a man dressed as a Native American on her train. They published my reply asking if she checked that he had a reservation.


I get bored on my commute sometimes.
( scarpe We Stole Bikes, Wed 4 May 2011, 11:49, 6 replies)

For Homosexual Men
I once got a (shit) joke published in FHM. The £25 prize was neither here nor there, what is important is that I can (and frequently do) tell people that I am a published comedy author.
(ScousersPet, Wed 4 May 2011, 11:15, 9 replies)

clinteastwoodbradfield; agony aunt
www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/features/virginia-ironside-dilemmas-2207354.html

I am Keith Williams in one of the replies. typed half arsed on a bus after a row with my then girlfriend. Won wine vouchers for my trouble
(clinteastwoodbradfield, Wed 4 May 2011, 10:53, 2 replies)

To cap it all, I never received my prize..
In the late eighties to early nineties, there was a weekly magazine called New Computer Express - like NME, but cooler as it was about computers ;)

NCE never really made the transition to the world of the PC, and started to lose readership. To counter this they tried a couple of cover (floppy) disks, and finally a huge competition.

I looked at the competition, examined the odds and the readership and worked out it was more likely than not to win a prize. I entered lustily expecting one of the more exciting prizes.

A few issues later the entire prize list was printed in the magazine - I had won.. a baseball cap. Bastards never sent it to me - did anyone receive a prize?
(EssY, Wed 4 May 2011, 10:52, Reply)

Viz 1: A Vagabond: ?
Mrs Vagabond bought a new memo board just after Christmas gone. It's illustrated with two 1940s women down to their waistlines, where the board starts.

Thus I illustrated the two women from below their waists, portraying them as having huge, bulging hairy legs, and enormous, hairy swinging cocks, obviously. I was so pleased with my efforts I took a picture and emailed it to Viz, asking for constructive criticism from Professor Fuck, editor of the Profanisaurus.

Knowing how slack they are, I've now locked myself into having to buy it every month, on the gamble that I might be in the next issue.

Bastards.
( Je suis un vagabond is an unfunny, up your own arse middle class knob, Wed 4 May 2011, 10:44, 8 replies)

Bill Hicks (among others) wants me dead
I work in advertising and marketing on the creative side. I do a lot of promotions and shopper marketing. I see huge prize funds being doled out regularly but never bother entering any of these things myself. Mrs Spimf scoffed at me last week for peeling the Monopoly stickers of a McDonalds meal "no one ever wins that shit" she informed me. To be honest I just wanted to see how the mechanic worked. But, I got all four train stations and won £500.

I think its the first time I've ever won anything but also quite possibly the first time i've ever tried to.

Which brings me to my point, don't buy something just because it has a promotion on it, but if you do, take part. I often see thousands of pounds worth of prizes unclaimed at the end of promotions, particularly the minor prizes, iPods, Alessi kitchen stuff all sorts, which is of course a marketers dream. The ideal promotion is one that prompts you to purchase but then presents enough hurdles to make you not bother participating.

Yes we're cunts but i get paid well and have lots of holiday and perks so i sleep very well at night thank you.

Sorry Bill
( spimf ™ is whoever you want him to be, Wed 4 May 2011, 10:39, 35 replies)

The Prodigy's Fat of the Land.
The Telegraph used to do a student magazine, Juiced or something, back when the internet was a novelty, and having a hotmail account was cool.

Rather than work on my degree, I took to reading the magazine online, writing in (obviously, I fitted this in between bouts of drinking, massive drugs and fresher fucking and playing Time Crisis), and entering their competitions, which I never won. So, I wrote to the editor, complaining that , inspite of my regular correspondence, I never won anything off them. The following month, I was the proud winner of a the aforementioned Prodigy album. Was it rigged, or was it just the case that the magazine had a really small readership? I think the magazine folded shortly after, so I guess we'll never know.
( monster munch person, man, woman... camera... TV?, Wed 4 May 2011, 10:25, Reply)

I had a joke printed
in Whizzer and Chips and won a money token and a t-shirt. They didn't print my name and I don't think I spent the token but I felt like a god in the t-shirt.
( sutit only the crumbliest, flakiest posts, Wed 4 May 2011, 10:15, 1 reply)

I won the sack relay race during my primary school sports day, when I were a nipper.....
I was the slowest runner in school, I even got beat by the fat kid. So when my team mates got paired with me they thought they were done for. While my long legs couldn't run very fast...turns out they could hop bloody well.

I still have the medal, it's the only sporting event I have ever won.

I did come third in the egg and spoon race the next year though. I retired that year, at the top of my sporting career.
( Bamboo Steamer, Wed 4 May 2011, 10:00, Reply)

I won a fishing competition when I was eleven
I shoved pebbles down the mouths of each fish I caught to make them heavier.
(oneinthepink is at your cervix m'lady, Wed 4 May 2011, 9:40, 2 replies)

Raising the bar
I have a mate, Steve, who's a lovely bloke. We used to go on motorcycle rides through the country, stopping at country pubs. Since we couldn't drink more than the occasional half, we would play pool or whatever the pub offered.

Now, Steve is great, but I have to admit that he's far sportier than me. Fitter, better coordination and way more alpha-male competitive. So the usual pattern would be that he'd beat me royally at whatever we were playing. I didn't mind; I was only in it for a laugh anyway.

One legendary day, the pub happened to have a bar billiards table. I like bar billiards - it's a pity you don't see it more often. But I'm no better at that than I am at pool, usually. However, on this day, the cue gods were smiling at me. Whatever I attempted worked; balls banana'd around mushrooms*, ricocheted complcatedly around cushions and snukked into pockets as if drawn by magnetism. I could do no wrong, even fluffed shots were fluking into place and the final score was something like 2,200 to 40.

I've never played bar billiards since. I know I'll never win like that again.

* Damn, I'm hungry now. Bananas and mushrooms, anyone?
(moon monkey is busy making memories worth repressing, Wed 4 May 2011, 9:21, Reply)

Hoopla - and a lesson in capitalism.
At my primary school, we used to get a day out to the Staffordshire County Show every year - presumably, so that the kids could see what a cow looks like. In practice, it meant that we'd spend a few minutes looking at barns and dung and tractors, and then spend the rest of the day milling around the stalls spending a few pence on junk.

One of the stalls was a hoopla game. On little wooden blocks around a table were various poor prizes - bottles of HP sauce and the like - and one good prize: a crisp five-pound note. The parent who'd been roped into chaperoning a small group of us around the place gave us each the required 10 or 20p that three hoops would cost. I walked up to the oche, looked at the fiver, and tried to work out how I ought to take aim.

I threw the first of my hoops...

... and it landed neatly - no: perfectly - around the fiver.

I was ecstatic: this was the first time in my life that I had had in my hand so much cash - about a month's pocket-money - that I could unequivocally call mine. Nor have I ever been a big spender (and I think I was saving up for a new bike at the time, too); and so I resisted the ample opportunity to spend my winnings on penny chews straight away. And, naturally, at the end of the day, the first thing I said to my mother when I got off the bus was to tell her about my victory.

Was she thrilled on my behalf? Proud that I had decided not to waste my capital on tooth-decay? Possibly. But she hid it well, and told me instead that I should immediately go and offer my fiver to the parent who had lent me the money to enter the game to begin with, since it was morally his.

I learned something about capitalism that day.
( Enzyme is powered by sunlight, Wed 4 May 2011, 9:10, 7 replies)

XFM , 2002...
...back before seemingly all competitions involve texting in and getting picked randomly, I won shitloads off them in a three month spell when I was able to phone in during the day. I won:
*tickets to the Leeds festival 2002
*trip for two to amsterdam and £500 spending money
*wristband to see the manic street preachers play their B-Sides in the oxford street HMV
*tickets to see the manics homecoming gig, with string sections, in cardiff St davods hall, along with transport and accomodation
*shitloads of CD's off Zoe Ball
*tickets to see the Rolling Stones at twickenham, which I gave to my parents
*tickets to the premier of The Matrix reloaded

I was very popular with my friends at the time.
(clinteastwoodbradfield, Wed 4 May 2011, 8:36, 4 replies)

well...
She's 22.
(feedingtimeatthezoo day 1 of his bikini diet started, Wed 4 May 2011, 2:35, 12 replies)