Instasweat

As one does, I recently entered a rake of bike comps in the monthlies.

Imagine my prickly cheeks as I take a 'call from a VERY cheerful chap
from Two-magazine, asking if I'd recently tried my hand for the new
SpeedTriple.

"Yeees," my dry mouth says, whilst simultaneously reliving the day that
I got the first four consecutive numbers on the thing that you
earthlings call Lotto.

"Would you be interested in taking out a..."

Don't ya think that's just plain mean?

 

Heh. Last year (or possibly the year before) Bike ran a competition to
win.... oh, some bike. CBR600 or something. Anyway, they rang the lucky
winner and he thought it was just a marketing call, said he wasn't
interested, and hung up.

So they tried again, and again, and he bellowed: "I'm not ******
interested" (or words to that effect) down the line and hung up
(again), so they thought "Sod it", and called the runner-up instead,
and gave him the prize.

They actually mentioned the original winner's balls-up in print, too,
which was amusing.

The best of all, though, was about 20 years ago when Superbike was
giving away... I think it was a Ducati. Anyway, the tie-breaker was to
guess the mileage on their staff hack BMW R80GS on a given day. And
they gave a few hints like average annual mileage, and then said that
the digit x (whatever it was) did not appear on the odometer at all on
the day in question.

Some smartarse worked out that there were only 200-odd possible
combinations, and actually bought 200 issues (he rang their subs
department to get a discount bulk order) to be sure of getting in the
winning entry......

.....and he then got his entries in too late to qualify.

 

Nice one.

This reminds me of a similar stunt I did way back.

MCN were doing a spot-the-motoball thing for an RC30.

A few days after sending my entry in I was at a mate's, who's dad was
well into his footy pools. He was also one 'o those folks who'd actually
had winnings from spot-the-ball.Purely by chance I had turned up as he was entering one, and he wasn't
fucking about with a pen. He had an ink-pad and a stamp with 100 crosses
on it. I'd never seen one before but it didn't take me long to join the
dots. I couldn't believe that such an aid was available from most
newsagents (still can't actually.)

It was at this point that I first began to mentally polish my RC30.

I'd sent my first 'hundred in at a cost of £5 (or more horrifyingly it
may have been £10 - me forget.) when I thought I may as well go again
with a fesh entry and cover a different part of the pitch. As I was
positioning the stamp I wondered how many blocks of 100 it would take to
cover the WHOLE pitch, thus removing any chance of missing the location
of the ball.

In the grip of the euphoria generated by a foolproof plan, I committed
totally. First I cut the back off a cereal packet and cut a window in it
the same size as the entry form photo. Next marked a grid to enable
perfect coverage, including narrow overlaps, of the whole photo and not
just the pitch. Didn't matter WHERE that ball was, I was *guaranteed* to
be half a mil away at the most.

It was at this point that I began to price matching leathers.

Ok then, that's 30 odd entries at £150 total but me no give **** 'coz I
can't lose. And 30 copies of the comic. These I got for nowt from a
local wholesaler whose MCN-returns I sourced just before being sent to
newspaper heaven.

Damn, my mates were gonna turn green.

The following coupla weeks saw me enveloped in the nirvana that was
inevtably sliding my way. I actually felt the same anticipation that I
had from ordering my first spankers bike a year previous. Nothing else
mattered.

Nearly rang MCN the day after the comp shut, but waited instead to be
devastated when the results were printed.

I didn't really feel a twat when the people who knew (eeeveryone) found
out I'd fucked it. There were "family men" at work who couldn't swallow
blowing a weeks wages on ****-all, who droned. What really pissed me
off were the (suddenly knowledgable) folks who told me that a spot-the-
ball cross has to be EXACTLY over the ball.

That's why I'd covered the whole page, ffs.

It was at this point that I began to mentally thrash myself with birch.

 

<I> wrote:

I'd heard that somewhere and yes, I'd heard of those rubber stamps as
well. Apparently the accuracy margin is almost supernatural, so I'm not
surprised you failed.

 

It was somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the
drugs began to take hold. I remember
(The Older Gentleman) saying
something like:

I've also heard that, on a certain Glasgow newspaper, it used to be the
case the prize was regularly won by relatives and pals of the editor
(sub, I presume) who determined the winner.

What a co-incidence, eh?

--

Dave

GS 850 x2 / SE 6a
SbS#6 DIAABTCOD#16 APOSTLE#6 FUB#3
FUB KotL OSOS#12? UKRMMA#19 COSOC#10

 

I just googled <"spot the ball" techniques>

I found answers though not the ones I was looking for. ;o)

 

Well I fucked that up.

http://tinyurl.com/4n4n5