Thanks, well it was a very long time ago and a good haul of them were tiebreakers.
I started in 1979 when my son was a baby.
He kept us awake a lot and sometimes I found I couldn’t get back to sleep..so to take my mind off things, I used to compose tie breakers in my head for the relevant competition.
You had to buy the product and submit a receipt and I really did well .
However the Virgin flights and three separate amounts of £1000 were just random draws
I probably haven’t done any since 2000 at least as the tiebreaker ones started to disappear and they nearly all became prize draws and entries on line.
I did them when a stamp was about 20p , not the princely sum it is now.
I remember when a site called free money set up and people could play one entry a day for free and that was one I won a £1000 on
The other two big dollops of cash were from the daily Mail
They used to do a couple of little quizzes every week, so I’d find the answers then quickly get it in the postbox and I was over the moon to get a letter to find I’d won a grand because this was first out of the hat
Five weeks later I won again.
They thought it was the same comp..but it wasn’t
Anyway they stumped up.
When my Dd was about 12 she entered a Today newspaper design a dress for Diana. Winners got a weekend in London.
There were 4 dates you could pick from .
Anyway she entered and won one of the 6 prizes.
However when we rang to claim our prize, the organisers said everyone had to go on a certain date when we were going to be on holiday in france.
But ..not to worry said the bright and breezy voice on the end of the phone...we will send you a video.😡
I knew I wasn’t wrong and and I ransacked every pile of cuttings and comps I had searching for the vital piece of paper to exonerate me
I was having a lie down one day and it just came to me, it was inside a clipboard on the piano..went and had a look ..yep there it was.
So they coughed up the weekend at a Hilton hotel for all 5 of us , bed breakfast and evening meal.and the trip to starlight express thrown in
Another one was when my Dd had won a comp to go on the Johnny Vaughan movie show.
Most of the prizes were just a day visit, but because we lived so far away, they flew us to Bristol, a taxi to bath and two nights in the fabulous bath spa hotel and then the train home.
My dd had a lovely day out with Johnny and the film crew and I had a lovely day around bath.
It was a wonder time, sometimes you’d get 3 or 4 prizes a week and then you’d have a lean spell for months but I think the fun has gone out of it now.
Happy days..I wish I’d recorded all my prizes but there you go. I didn’t.
One tv I won was for something like the milk board and there was free milk for a year as well.
I think the milkman thought it was free milk for life because it went on for quite some while.