| | 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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| | Mackie’s Ice Cream Competition.
Closing: No date given.
Prize
: Free Mackie’s ice cream for a year.
Task: Think of an excuse to treat yourself to Mackie's ice cream every day.
Comp Page: Click Here. |
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| | This Is Travel/Daily Mail Reviews. Fancy yourself as a travel writer? Here’s your chance to test your mettle. Just send in a review of your holiday or some aspect of it, and it could appear in the Daily Mail’s
travel pages. Reviews are published on the website, and the best each month gets the prize.
Closing: Monthly.
Prize: Five Lonely Planet guidebooks of your choice.
Entry Fee: None.
Comp Page: Click Here. |
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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: There are cash prizes totalling $10,000.
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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| | Bounty Active Families Competition.
Closing: 9.7.08.
Prize: A 3-day family holiday to Disneyland Paris, plus the use of a Ford C-MAX for two months. The winner will be given a camcorder to make a video diary of the holiday.
Task: Either say in up to 100 words why you and
your family should win, or send a 2-minute video of you and your family explaining why you should be Bounty’s video diarist.
Comp Page: Click Here
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| | MTV ‘The Feeling’ Competition.
Closing: 10.7.08.
Prize: A pair of tickets to see The Feeling at Somerset House, plus you get to interview the band for MTV.co.uk.
Task: Say in up to 50 words why you should be selected to interview The Feeling.
Comp Page: Click Here. |
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| | JJB Sporting Wish Competition. You will need a receipt for the purchase of a Reebok product from JJB Sports to enter this one.
Closing: 14.7.08.
Prize: Your sporting wish granted, up to a value of £5,000.
Task: State in no more than 700 characters what your sporting wish is and why.
Comp Page: Click Here. |
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| | Cheestrings Smile Competition. May 18 to June 17 is National
Smile Month, and the celebrate, the makers of Cheestrings are offering you and your family something to smile about.
Closing: 18.7.08.
Prize: A family theme park holiday to Orlando, Florida.
Task: In no more than 50 words, say what makes your family smile.
Comp Page: Click Here. |
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| | Virgin Radio Green flag Competition.
Closing: 18.7.08.
Prize
: A year’s free Green Flag Recovery Plus.
Task: Say what is your biggest frustration.
Comp Page: Click Here. |
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| | Times Online Wind in the Willows Competition. This contest is for childen of between 7 and 11. Entrants are required to create an original illustration inspired by The Wind in the Willows for use on the Vintage Classics edition of the book.
Closing
: 25.7.08.
Prizes: The winning illustration will be used on the book and the winner will receive 40 Random House children’s books of his or her choice. Runners-up each receive 20 books of their choice.
Task: Draw an illustration for the front of the new Willows book.
Comp Page: Click Here. |
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| | Creative Competitor Pure Emotion Photography Competition.
Closing: 26.7.08.
Prize: £100.
Task: Take a photograph that captures emotion in its purest form.
Entry Fee: £3.
Comp Page:
Click Here. |
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| | Heatworld Celebrity Catastrophe Competition.
Closing: 31.7.08.
Prize: Tickets to the Chelmsford V Festival
in August, together with camping passes, a two-person tent, sleeping bags, a digital camera and various other goodies, plus £150 for travel and other expenses.
Task: Describe the time you embarrassed yourself in front of somone famous.
Comp Page: Click Here. |
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| Pringles Dream Team Competition. Here’s one for the show-offs among you.
Closing: 31.7.08.
Prizes: 1st - Star in a TV ad, meet top footballers and
more. Best video each week wins an LCD TV with home cinema.
Task: Make a video clip (up to 2 minutes) of your coolest football skill and upload it to the website.
Comp Page: Click Here. |
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| | Brides Magazine Honeymoon Hamper Competition.
Closing: 8.8.08.
Prize: A honemoon hamper worth £700 by someone called Melissa Odabash.
Task
: Answer questions and say in up to 15 words why you would like to win.
Comp Page: Click Here. |
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| | Brides Magazine Dorchester Competition.
Closing: 8.8.08.
Prize: A romantic stay for two at the Dorchester hotel in London.
Task: Answer questions and say in up to 15 words why you would like to win.
Comp Page: Click Here. |
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| | Brides Magazine Maldives Competition.
Closing: 8.8.08.
Prize: A honeymoon at the private island resort of Coco Palm Bothu Hithi in the Maldives.
Task: Answer questions and say in up to 15 words why you would like to win a honeymoon to Maldives.
Comp Page: Click Here. |
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| | TNT Travel Writing and Photography Awards. Are you dynamite as a travel writer or travel photographer? If so, the
magazine TNT is looking for you. Send them an explosive piece of writing (up to 1,000 words) or a photograph blown up to between 7x5 and 10x8 inches, and you could win some er ... Oh hell, the fuse has gone out on this metaphor ... another damp squib.
Closing: 8.8.08.
Prizes: Writing - £1,000, £500 (in Supercheque retail and travel vouchers, redeemable at stores such as PC World, Dixons, WH Smith).
Photography - 2 x an Olympus E-3 professional camera with 14-54mm lens, worth £1,499; Olympus E-420 Double Zoom Kit worth £479.
Entry Fee: None - Free to enter (one piece of writing and one photo allowed per entrant).
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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| | 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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| | 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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