» Abusing freebies

Smashing Hits
Way back in the 80's when I was an impressionable teenager, I used to religiously buy Smash Hits so that I could memorise all the words to songs such as ABC's "The Look of Love" and something by Curiousity Killed The Cat.

Well Smash Hits used to run competitions weekly with "top pop pressies" up for grabs. The magazine though itself wild and wacky in an 80's day-glo fingerless gloves and pop sock kind of way, so it used to say, in the days before Ant and Dec premium rate lines, "send your answer in on something red" or "send your answer in on a moustache". Obviously thinking no-one would take them seriously.

Little did they know my mam ran a post office, so I though nothing of abusing the freebies by sending in my Smash Hit competition answers sellotaped to giant catering tins of baked beans, iced onto the top of a birthday cake and on giant moustaches made out of card - anything they asked for, but big and expensive to post. God knows what they thought in their office at Smash Hits Towers as all this assorted junk arrived each week.

What did I get out of it? Well I kept winning - and so much that I had to enter using the little old lady next door's name and address and all the staff who worked in the Post Office's addresses. And there the bragging stops, cos my prizes were things like "Hipsway gatefold 12inch singles", "Katrina and The Waves Bucket and Spade set" and other pop tat that you won't find on ebay these days. I decided to stop my blagging when the postman arrived one morning carrying a lifesize cardboard cutout of Freddie Mercury from his "Great Pretender" video. Then I knew it was time to give in.

I wonder why the Post Office is in such trouble these days?
(Wed 14th Nov 2007, 16:38, More)