(yes, reader David A. Edgar who won the Jack Daniels competition from a few weeks ago, I'm looking at YOU).

I won a stamp collecting kit out of the Warlord comic once, and that's about it. Any advance on that?

As a youngster I entered a competition in Sounds to win a hand-built Slingerland drum kit. Entrants had to make as many words as they could from the phrase ‘derringerappice’, a piece of gibberish compiled from two surnames, those of Rick Derringer and Carmine Appice, whose wildly unsuccessful Party Tested album was the spur for the competition. These days, of course, you’d just run the phrase through the Internet Anagram Server and have a complete set of answers inside a few seconds, but this was 1983, I didn’t have access to a computer, and Tim Berners Lee was still half a dozen years away from inventing the World Wide Web.

So I spent two weeks in the reference department of Northampton Public Library going through the entire 20-volume Oxford English Dictionary in search of the winning words, and sent the 1700 or so I found off to the Sounds office in London. A few weeks later I bought the paper to see my name feature proudly in the list of prizewinners, in second place. No drum kit, but surely something worthy of all that time and effort? No such luck. I received a copy of the album. It took six months to arrive, and I only listened to it once. It was rubbish.

Always the bridesmaid, never the bride.

My son is still distraught that we didn't win the Steepletone record player from you lot. He still has his eyes on his old mans records.

London mag TNT ran a comp some years back to win this on video. I was quite happy to receive a call saying I'd won and that I'd be getting copy sometime soon. The next day one turns up, followed by another the next, a further copy the day after and then two more the day after that.
Christmas presents were sorted that year.

....about 10 years ago in a NME competition....the highlight of my life, it just doesn't get better than that

from the NME in 1983.

I had to provide a witty caption to a photo of Stephen Mallinder, if I remember correctly. I've still got the VHS tape. I watched it once. In 1983.

It's a pretty low tech affair, with the Cab's doomy soundscape throbbing throughout. There are clips from their 'Johnny Yesno' film work in there too. It is very art school project, but not without a certain charm. Takes me back to the dark days of secondary school teaching under the cosh of Keith Joseph and the vampire bitch from Hell.

I've done a VHS to DVD 'backup' if anyone's desperate to see it. I suppose I ought to bung it on eBay before the VHS format finally shuffles off everyone's radar. Even the Cab geeks'.

Did win an umbrella from the local newspaper when I was twelve, mind.

Have been tempted by the Caption Competition in the back of the magazine - but my comedy gene seems to go missing when I have to think.

Well done to Mr. River & please let us have a review on the book.

and on a quick thumb through it looks to be fascinating reading.

Thank you from me too!

Oh, and I've won a case of vino for a letter I sent to John Lewis's Source magazine. That's my first ever win, the book my second. Not bad going; I look forward to the wine actually arriving.

From our local newspaper. No not a laser disc player. The new-fangled video disc player from RCA where you had to eject the 12-inch style disc halfway through the film and turn it over. The system lasted as long as it took to write the letters B-E-T-A-M-A-X.

Luckier with a visit from Stuart Hall with a family holiday for 2 weeks in Orlando from Granada TV's holiday programme. Other nominee's got a weekend in Prestatyn or Blackpool.

and they then cancelled their tour after Liam was banned from the airline for threatening the pilot.

Double win there.

I won £100 of HMV vouchers from a magazine for law students when I was at Bar School (1998).

That same year I won tickets from an XFM phone-in to see Audioweb (we left after they played the one song we knew) and my girlfriend (now wife) won me tickets for an in-store James gig, along with a signed copy of their best-of album, the same way about a week later.

More recently, the Guardian very kindly provided me with the first 3 seasons of The Wire on DVD when I won a competition in Guide section - I think I must have been the only entrant as it was in very small print at the bottom of an article by Charlie Brooker raving about how good the show was.

I won a few things from local newspapers in my teens; I suspect Iwas often the only entrant. The best one I remember was a ticket for Monsters of Rock at Donington in 1982 (Dio, Twisted Sister, Meat Loaf, ZZ Top, Whitesnake – ah, that was a bill.)
I also won a signed copy of Timbuk 3’s album a few year’s later, which I still have, along with a pair of the-future’s so-bright-I-gotta-wear-‘em shades, which I promptly sat on and broke.

Really. A Punk compilation from Radio 2. The latest Allison Moorer from Americana UK. £100 amazon voucher, a w/e in Paris and a weeks walking in Spain from my chosen trades various magazines. A hamper and a champagne book from (the late) Taste magazine. This is not so as to brag, cos any idiot can enter everything by logging on to competition websites, which is overly anal and mercenary, I feel, but if there is a comp available as I surf the sites I surf, well, it would be rude not to enter.
Wouldn't it?
When are we going to read the prize winning entries in the JD competition that came and went in a nanosecond?