I have. Yesterday.

I was half-listening to Talksport when I heard, to my surprise, "I Love To Boogie", one of the lesser hits by late-period T. Rex.

It was part of some feature called Parry-oke, where presenter Mike 'Porky' Parry sings a song over a karaoke backing and the listeners have to say who the song was by.

I texted in the answer, then got distracted and switched off the radio (cos the mother-in-law was visiting and I needed to be sociable), and forgot all about it until half an hour later when a Talksport production assistant rang up and told me I'd won.

I didn't even know what I'd won. Turns out it was £100 in Wetherspoons vouchers. I'd have preferred an all-expenses-paid holiday to the next World Cup or whatever, but it's better than a poke in the eye (although, depending on the time of day and the branch of Wetherspoons, one might lead to the other).

So, for the foreseeable future, I guess I'll be eating already cut-price pub lunches every Sunday, for free.

Anyway, have you ever won anything in a competition? If so, what, when, how?

(I think this is the first time I have.)

Twice, sort of: both times on GLR/BBC London. By getting the answer from me in both cases, Mrs E won:

1. A copy of the (then) latest Onion book, by correctly naming the last one (Our Dumb Century). Seah Hughes show.

2. A copy of a guide to the best beers of the world, by naming the country with the biggest beer consumption per head. Robert Elms show.

Number 2, the answer is actually the Czech Republic, but they got it wrong. Fortunately, her indoors is good at accents, and pretended to be someone else when ringing up for the second time after I'd said "OK, try Germany then."

I've had a good run on the NME crossword. At least 12 times in the past 7 or 8 years I've had the joy of £35 in HMV vouchers landing on my door mat.

However earlier this year I got a load of CD's that were obviously cluttering up the office. I mean music journos must get sent a load of shite (and not just in a Levellers sense), but these were beyond dreadful. To my dismay the vouchers were no more.

I haven't done the crossword since.

A BMX bike on MTV.

A cue in a pool tournament (thanks to my mad skillz).

A Radio 1 t-shirt with a design of 9 lurid pictures of Danny Baker, in a kind of Warhol screenprint style. It was for identifying the closing soliloquy from The Day The Earth Caught Fire.

I won the second prize in AFC Wimbledon's golden goal thing for our home game against Merstham or someone. I had the "game to finish 1-0" ticket. I was drunk at the time so foolishly donated my £25 winnings straight to the club.

I won a school story-writing competition when I was eight years old for my thrilling composition "Three days to go" in which it was the year 2006 and I was Martin Peters' son, now Captain of an England team three days from a World Cup final. Prize was a fifty pence book token.

Oh, and I won tickets for the BSP gig at the Natural History Museum a couple of weeks ago.

I quite fancy becoming a dedicated 'comper'. I might be completely deluded in this, but I reckon the word-games and crosswords in those trashy women's mags (That's Life etc), which Mrs Rhino sometimes buys on train journeys, are a potentially lucrative source.

My cousin and her husband are part of an online community of people who enter themselves for TV game shows (and swap tip-offs and advice). So far they've been on National Lottery Live, The Weakest Link, some other new thing in a similar vein, and won something like £45,000 in total.

The producers don't care if your face has already been on screen on a different show. All they care about is that you can be personable and glib when a camera is pointed at you, and if you've already proven yourself, so much the better.

Back in the mid-1980s, I had a close friend who was a DJ at a local radio station. Every night when he was on the air, I would call him and we would chat while he was working. Sometimes it was very difficult to get through, but I was persistent and had a redial button on my phone.

One night I rang him up and was happily surprised to hear him say that I was the 102nd caller and that I had won $102 (the frequency was 102.5MHz). I asked if there was any impropriety in my winning, but this was before the days of caller ID and he had no way of knowing that I was the caller, so he said I had won fair and square.

It happened again about a week later, but the radio station had a rule about winning more than once in a 30 day period.

30 days is ideal, though. There are some parts of the UK, and possibly also the US, where £100/$100 once a month would cover your rent...

I won some Oriental recipe books, and 6 CD's on a Sunday morning Radio 1 quiz in about 1990, and free tickets to a (girds loins) St*ng concert by identifying who 'Englishman in New York' was about.

I also won a 22lb chocolate easter egg in a raffle as a kid, as well as a huge jar of jelly babies, after correctly guessing the number in said jar.

And my quiz team came 2nd in a competition about 13 years ago when the first prize was 4 tickets to see Julian Clary and we thought about that, and decided to finish 2nd for £100 in cash.

Coincidentally (re Rhino's post), I once won tickets to see T-Rex. It was in Toronto. CHUM radio was running their interminable "I listen to CHUM" campaign. The daughter of my partner made us all answer the phone with the cursed phrase on pain of terminal sulks, tantrums and plagues of boils. It didn't bother me too much because hardly anyone knew me in TO so I rarely picked up the phone. But one day I was home alone and did. Two tickets to see tiny little Marc and the Doobie Brothers. Instant cred from a twelve year-old it bought me.

I won tickets to see the New Fast Automatic Daffodils off the Gary Crowley show many years ago. I can't remember anything else where you have to answer questions unless you count pub quizzes, in which case you can add a bottle of vodka and a bottle of sambuca and assorted beer vouchers and stuff.

there are magazines dedicated to competition entering - you can do quite well. My mum's always sending off for free draws, too. I once got a massive tin of chocolates through the post cos she'd entered in my name.

Oh and last week I got the graphic novel Wanted at the BFI film quiz, which I was really pleased with.

Spearmint Rhino wrote:

QUOTE:
30 days is ideal, though. There are some parts of the UK, and possibly also the US, where £100/$100 once a month would cover your rent...

It's true. My rent at the time was $199/month. My two jobs would easily cover the other $99.

I once achieved the feat of finding a harvestman in a fen and was rewarded with a perspex box with a built in magnifying glass for looking at creepy crawlies with. It was presented to me by david bellamy

There was a period roughly 10-15 years ago when I seemed to win every competition I entered. It was mainly from the same film and music mags (videos, cds, tickets) and every couple of months as opposed to every week but it got to the point where I was actually expecting to win every one I entered.

The best thing I won though was probably a year's free cinema-going from the tv show "Film 98". This was actually 52 complimentary tickets for the cinema of my choice. Well, actually the local art-house one (more my taste) wasn't an option so I chose the nearest multiplex. As I had to use them up within a year, I ended up seeing some pretty bad films. Still, it was free (and I also got a "Film 98" sweatshirt!)

Oddly, I moved house shortly after that and haven't won a competition since.

I won tickets - sorry, VIP tickets - to the launch party for 808 State's last album a few years ago, in a dodgy bar in Manchester. For a long time, the page revealing that I'd won was the first return when I Googled my name.