| | Below is a list of UK competitions whose prizes are awarded to the most skillful entrants (skill comps). With practice you can improve your skills in slogan competitions and the like, but there is nothing you can do to make yourself luckier - hence my dislike of draws. Draws are for
the slave to fortune - and that goes double for Internet draws where you have no envelopes on which to deploy lurid inks, pathetic pleas or salacious drawings in an effort to stand out from the crowd. I’ve won a veritable warehouseful of prizes plus the 7 cars, and I’ve sweated for every one. If I’d wasted my time on draws, this site would be devoted to the story of how I won a T-shirt and a voucher for £50 off my next world cruise. Of course, if you’re prepared to enter
draws by the thousand, you can narrow the odds a bit, but your time would be better spent developing skills with slogan and other tiebreaker competitions (see Be a Winner).
Mind you, I don’t recommend that you become obsessed with competitions in the way I have in the past, nor should you employ the sort of extreme (and often dishonest) tactics used by the compers in my novel. Keep comping as a hobby. But when you do it, do it like a competitions pro rather than a dabbler.
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| | UK Slogan & Other Competitions | |
| | International Library of Photography Amateur Photo Contest. Not actually a UK competition, but it’s open to UK residents.
Prizes:
Annual prize - $10,000. Individual prizes - $1,000. 40 first prizes of $35 in each category, plus 73 second prizes worth $25.
Closing: Monthly.
Task: Submit your best photo, and if you are now reaching for that one of Aunt Sally with her left arm and half an ear cut off, don’t hold your breath (unless that’s how Aunt Sally looks in the flesh).
Website: www.picture.com |
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| | Swizzels Sweets Competition.
Prize: unspecified, but I’ll bet it’s something your dentist won’t approve of.
Closing: Monthly.
Task:
Answer questions (all answers can be found on the website) and suggest a new sweet, or an improvement to an existing sweet.
I include this one for reasons of nostalgia. My grandfather used to live in New Mills not far from the Swizzels factory, and when I visited him as a child I could smell the exotic aromas of the sweets cooking in the vats. When Granddad saw the faraway look in my eye he said I must be thinking great thoughts, and he was right: I was
thinking about Fruit Fizzers. If you come up with a wonderful new sweet, you will be doing a service to ... well, if not mankind, then at least boy and girl kind.
Website: www.swizzels-matlow.com |
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| | Micromark Ideas Competition.
Closing: Quarterly.
Prize: £100 worth of Micromark products.
Task: Send in an idea for a new electrical product you’ve always wished for.
Comp Page: Click Here (then click ‘competitions’ at top of MM homepage). |
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| | Cutest Pet Contest. This competition comes from the International Pet Owners Club in the USA. It is open worldwide. Any kind of pet is eligible, they say. I can rememeber the days when pet rocks were all the rage. I wonder what the contest judges would make of a picture of one of those? Or a cyber pet? Entry is free, but you can only send in one entry every eight months.
Closing
: At regular intervals.
Prize: $1,000.
Task: Take a photograph of your cute pet.
Comp Page: Click Here. |
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| | | But first a word from our sponsor. Hi. I’m Michael
Shenton, creator of this website and author of Stiff Competition, the comping story that won the Peter Pook
Humorous Novel Competition. People who are looking for me through search engines can remember just about everything about the website save its name and, more distressingly for me, my name. They search for ‘Peter Pook author’, ’the man who wrote Peter Pook’, that bloke who won the cars’ and all manner of other odd things, but never
‘Michael Shenton’. The sole purpose of this site is to get my name known in the hope that one day dozens of people will buy my current novel and any others I manage to get published. So would you all kindly make a note of it. Michael Shenton. Thank you. |
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| | Arena Magazine MacBook Competition.
Closing: Not stated. I’m always wary of these contests with no declared closing
date because some of them seem to go on forever, as if the promoters have forgotten all about them. So don’t expect too much from this one. Arena is an Emap magazine, and if you want to know how Emap views the commitments of its magazines, see my Treasure Hunt page. Of course, they may have improved, along with the flying abilities of pigs, but I wouldn’t put any money on it.
Prize: An Apple MacBook.
Task: Say what you
would do with the MacBook if you had the chance to explore its endless world of possibilities.
Comp Page: Click Here. |
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| | Brides Magazine Spa Competition.
Closing: Unknown.
Prize: A luxury overnight spa break for two at the Macdonald Bath Spa Hotel in Bath.
Task: Answer questions and say in up to 15 words why you would like to win the prize.
Comp Page: Click Here. |
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| | Daily Mail Fantasy Football Competition. Football fans can win some very attractive prizes in this contest, if it turns out that all those bits of advice they shout at the players and manager during a game, and the opinions they express in the pub afterwards, are as good as they seem to think.
Closing: To start scoring from the start of the season you must be registered by noon on 16.8.08. You can register after this date, but it does mean you
miss out on some points.
Prizes: 1st - £25,000. There are numerous other prizes from a total fund of £50,000.
Task: Pick a fantasy team of 11 players from those listed. You have a budget of £75million.
Comp Page: Click Here. |
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| Caribbean Twist Competition. Can you create this summer’s new flavour in the form of a cocktail, and do you fancy a free holiday in the Caribbean? If so, this contest is made for you.
Closing: 29.8.08.
Prizes: Three Caribbean holidays for two.
Task: Create this summer’s cocktail.
Comp Page: Click Here. |
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| | Design a Fab Den Competition. This contest from the makers of Fab ice lollies is open only to children aged between 5 and 15 who are dissatisfied with the current layout of their bedrooms and who can get permission from their parents to have something done about it by the professionals.
Closing: 30.8.08.
Prizes (3): Your bedroom redesigned by an interior designer. In addition you will receive an invitation for you and a parent/guardian to attend a special winners’ party at London Zoo on July 29. Take note that your parent/guardian will have to fork out for the travel expenses, as Richmond Ice Cream is too stingy to pay for the tickets. How mean can you get?
Task: Design your ideal bedroom, using the form you can print from the website.
The judges will be looking for a design that combines practical use as a bedroom with original use of space and innovative design. Age will be taken into account.
Comp Page: Click Here. |
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| | Mydeco Bathroom Competition.
Closing: 1.9.08.
Prize: A £1,500 bathroom suite from B&Q.
Task: Describe your dream bathroom in up to 50 words.
Comp Page: Click Here. |
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| | Car Rentals Pleasure Beach Competition.
Closing: 2.9.08.
Prizes (3): A family entry wristband for an action-packed Pleasure Beach day (travel not included!).
Task: Say in up to 15 words why you want to experience the thrills and spills of Pleasure Beach, Blackpool.
Comp Page: Click Here. |
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| | Families Worldwide Competition.
Closing
: 15.9.08.
Prize: A family holiday to Egypt worth £4,000.
Task: Answer questions and say in up to 20 words what is the best thing about travelling with your children.
Comp Page: Click Here. |
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| The Last Good Man Competition. It’s a novel set in Cornwall, in case you were wondering, published by Beautiful Books.
Closing: 30.9.08.
Prize: A luxury night in Cornwall form two, with dinner at Jamie Oliver’s restaurant.
Task: Answer questions and say in up to 15 words why you would like to meet the last good man on earth.
Comp Page: Click Here. |
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| Brides Magazine Honeymoon Competition.
Closing: 3.10.08.
Prize: A honeymoon in Mauritius with your own butler.
Task: Answer
questions and say in 15 words why you would like to win a honeymoon in Mauritius.
Comp Page: Click Here. |
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| | Paddington Bear Limerick Competition.
Closing: 12.10.08.
Prize: A set of Paddington Bear books.
Task: Write a limerick about Paddington.
Comp Page: Click Here. |
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| | Kit Kat Dream Break Competition.
Closing
: 31.10.08.
Prizes: Five dream breaks worth up to £2,000 each.
Task: Describe the break of your dreams in up to 100 words.
Comp Page: Click Here. |
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| | Chapter One Promotions Young Illustrator’s Competition. This is for budding illustrators aged up to 18 who have a fiver to spare from their pocket money for the entry fee. Materials used for the illustration can be ink, pencil, crayons, paints, chalk, gummed paper, glitter, etc.
Closing: 31.10.08.
Prizes: £150, £75, £50.
Task: Create a drawing that perfectly illustrates one of the listed story titles.
Entry Fee: £5.
Comp Page: Click Here. |
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| The Independent - Kenya Holiday Competition.
Closing: 30.11.08.
Prize: A holiday for four in Kenya.
Task: Describe your alter ego.
Comp Page: Click Here. |
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| | SanDisk Spot-the-Bike Competition.
Closing: 31.12.08.
Prize: A Ducati 1098 Superbike.
Task: Find the missing rider in a photo taken at a MotoGP race, and then create a name for an imaginary SanDisk/Ducati motorbike.
Comp Page: Click Here. |
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| | Pubwise Spot-the-Pint Competition.
Closing: Monthly.
Prizes
: Bar games and Comprehensive Cocktail Recipe Book.
Task: Move a pint of beer to the position you think it should occupy in the picture.
Comp Page: Click Here. |
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| | Yzen Caption Competition. This is a simple monthly comp you might like to take a shot at now and again, just to help sharpen your wit.
Closing: End of each month.
Prize: A bottle of bubbly.
Task
: Supply a caption for the picture (changes each month).
Comp Page: Click Here. |
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| | Special Offer: Ink Club is offering a free compatible ink cartridge for Epson or Canon printers (P&P not free), plus big savings on all cartridges, original and compatible. |
| | You can find more comps on the sites listed on Comps Links. Most will be draws, but keep digging and you should unearth a few skillcomps. Remember: the harder they are to find, the fewer entries there will be. |
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| | | Note:
In slogan comps with a word limit, there is some disagreement over how to count contractions such as ‘can’t’. Some say they count as one word, others that they count as two. Logically, when two words have been glued together you then have only one word, but logic doesn’t always come into it as comps are often run by women. Therefore you might like to err on the safe side.
[Joke Alert: Only kidding about women, ladies. Please
don’t send me any more severed horses’ heads - there’s no room left in my freezer.] |
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