Stick it to the man

In January, I mostly won stickers. Actually, I only won stickers. Hundreds of them. More than I’ve bought in my entire life. In itself, that’s hardly surprising - I’ve never been a completist: I got two-thirds of the way through my ET album, one-third through my Return of the Jedi album, and no more than a dozen stickers into any of the Smash Hits albums. That’s the trouble when you’re too tight to pay out - the desire for closure doesn’t so much fade as surrender to the economic imperative.

My first-born is currently hovering around this point. He was all into his Norwich City album while people were gifting him stickers, but nothing on God's earth was going to make him lift a finger to earn the money for more.

The younger one, however, enjoys greater indulgence - to which end, this season alone has brought him not only Norwich City stickers, but also Match Attax Champions League cards, Panini Premier League cards and Panini FIFA365 cards, all of which he files carefully according to no system whatsoever, all over his floor.

100 packets of Panini stickers: more than any rational human would ever need
AND THEY ARE ALL MINE!

And yes, to this heap he will shortly be adding the 100 packets of Panini Premier League stickers I won from Cadbury the other night.

This ton-box of stickers is, if you like, the entry-level prize. These boxes are currently retailing on Amazon for upwards of sixty quid and Cadbury is giving away two thousand of them. So, as entry-level prize pools go, this one carries a soupcon more swag than the tsunami of drawstring bags and keyrings that Cadbury has given away on previous occasions.

The next prize tier, naturally, is even grander: the album plus complete set of stickers - in other words, the finished article.

ALL THE STICKERS! ALL OF THEM!

For some people, a prize like this would be off the scale of insane. I, however, am conflicted. I mean, there’s no doubt that these sticker-books are legit rackets - case in point, the last Panini World Cup album would have cost a bare minimum of £109 to complete, assuming you bought 137 packets without a single duplicate, but more likely pushing £400 - and more still if you had no mates to swap with.

And yet! It’s the heat of desire; the thrill of the trades; the satisfaction of completing a page, a team or even an album.

It’s all about the experience.

A completed album, straight off-the-shelf, is an artefact devoid of emotional journey. To be sure, there’s mindfulness to be found in fastening millionaires to boxes, but in terms of experience, it’s like studying the Skywalker family tree before watching Star Wars for the first time.

Comping’s not so different. Yes, the prizes are nice, but sometimes they account for such a small fraction of the experience that you start questioning why you bother. This is why you’ve got to enjoy the ride. As my dad regularly used to say, sometimes it’s better to travel than to arrive.

There are many paths to happiness, and so far in 2020, this one I’ve barely trod. The fact that I’ve still managed to win something, however, is a nice reminder that it’s OK to take it easy. There’ll be plenty more when the time is right.

Prize unboxing May/June 2019

May wasn't a time of abundance so I rolled it into June ... which wasn't really a time of abundance either ... Must try harder!

Hope you had a great month! Be lucky!

Prize Unboxing April 2019

Due to other commitments (more on which anon), I've taken my foot off the pedal these last couple of months. As a result, the wins have tended to be more modest. This month, however, has enjoyed a little uptick. That and a minor injury to my little helper - but don't worry, it grew back!

Be lucky!

Prize Unboxing January/February 2019

January didn't make for exciting viewing, so this month's upload is an unboxing rollover - but don't get too excited! As ever, I'm outgunned by the little one, and in case you're wondering - it's a cough sweet in my mouth :D

Thanks also to Laura for being my biscuit tag-buddy and Davina for tote-tagging!

Be lucky!

Prize Unboxing December 2018

December's unboxing is a day late, but given all the seasonal distractions, I hope you'll forgive me!

The video excludes the £30 John Lewis voucher I won from Velux, as this was emailed to me, but it does include the heartwarming moment where - well, I won't spoil it, but Rebecca Beesley, you are an absolute poppet!

Finally, I've no idea why the last section filmed itself in mirror format, but you'll work it out!

Have a lucky new year!

Prize unboxing - October 2018

It's a fairly digestible video this month, although I should apologise for the muck on the camera lens that's making the focus go all screwy. Also, I assure you that the soap doesn't smell of Wickes.

Be Lucky!

Prize Unboxing September 2018

It's a personal best - the epickest unboxing video yet! Which is to say, epic in the sense of longest, as I've just broken the 15 minute barrier - you have been warned!

The unprecedented scale caused YouTube to blow a gasket, which explains the unusual thumbnail, but I hope you enjoy it anyway.

Be lucky!

Game, Set & Match

There are money-can’t-buy prizes and there are my-money-can’t-buy prizes. For example, I never realised how beyond my means Wimbledon was until I checked just the other day. On the final Saturday, it costs £30 just to walk around the grounds. Sure, you might get lucky and see someone warming up on the outside courts, but if you want to see the ladies’ final, a Centre Court ticket is £170 for the day. And, yes, tickets for the men’s final cost even more. So, assuming I’d managed to get through the ballot system and procure tickets for me and my wife, I’d be £400 down before so much as sniffing a strawberry.

It also stands to reason that if you want to eat there, you’re going to be forking out a small wedge. Sure, ‘tis but £2.50 for a bowl of the aforementioned strawberries, but man cannot live on fruit alone - not when there’s all that cucumber to consider, although at £8.50 a glass, sourcing your five-a-day solely from Pimms’ garnish is unwise in more ways than one.

You can therefore imagine how I felt when Robinsons (yes, the squash people) told me I’d won VIP tickets to this year’s ladies’ final. You can also imagine my strangled squeals of drawn-out frustration that the only person I was able to share this news with for the next hour had no concept of SW19, never mind corporate hospitality, on account of being only four years old.

If you’re thinking that this is unusually good fortune for me, you’d be right. I couldn’t possibly say what something like this is worth, but if it’s not the fanciest prize of my life, then it’s surely a close second, and certainly the most amazing thing I’ve ever won from a tie-break comp.

A tie-breaker? No, I couldn’t believe it either. In five years of comping, my track record with writing tie-breaks can be summarised as follows:

• a nice cake (I was the only entrant); and
• a hoodie from an online smut site (four entrants; three of whom failed to read the brief).

In the latter case, I was actually hoping to win the dressing gown, so even here I was wide of the mark.

Missing the mark is of course an area where it is incredibly easy to excel. In the present instance, for example, I drew a blank for three consecutive weeks before Robinsons took a shine to my suggestion for a new flavour for its Fruit Creations range.

Truthfully, I was never going to win in the first week - there were over a thousand entrants and regardless of how tasty my idea might have been, I always knew that it lacked the mustard to stand out from such numbers. In Week 2, however, I pulled my socks up and tossed in a tennis pun or two.
Nevertheless, despite a massive drop in the number of entrants, it wasn’t my week. In Week 3, I tried putting my recipe in verse form. Still no luck.

By Week 4, then, it was time to go all in. That my recipe was going to have strawberries was a given, but I was also going to saddle it with more tennis puns than would be remotely decent. Thus:

LET me take ADVANTAGE of this opportunity to KNOCK UP something with strawberries - surely you can’t FAULT me there?! It’d be ACE to LOB in some rhubarb PULP too - a MIXED DOUBLE of classic British flavours. But HOLD on a sec - if you really want a SMASH hit of a drink, I’d LOVE to add a little ginger and SERVE with a smile! (Trust me - folks will be making a RACKET about this juice for years!)

Fortunately, it was one of those weeks where nothing succeeds like excess - helped by the fact that the drop-off in entries had continued, and fewer than 350 people had thrown their hat in the ring.

At this point, all that remained was to get a babysitter, book train tickets, buy trousers and, oh, tell my wife!

Procuring rail tickets at short notice is seldom cheap, and this occasion was no exception. What I did not expect was that the most economical way to arrive in London would be to travel first-class. I was also not expecting the coffee to be quite as dreadful as that served in prole class, but there you go.

That a first-class ticket entitles the holder to a free packed lunch along the lines of the Boots Meal Deal is nice, but whether that makes it worth five times the basic apex fare is up for debate. Such digression, however, is moot: any pleasure gleaned from this brief insight into how the other half lives dissolves into grimy dust the moment you board whatever hot, stinking Tube train connects you to Southfields.

On the plus side, the walk to the grounds is straightforward and our conga line down Wimbledon Park Road was refreshingly genteel.

Before I go any further, I must come clean about my ticket kink: I love the physical experience of slapping my ticket on the counter and swanning inside ahead of the Johnny-come-hopefuls. It might sound like mild schadenfreude, but it’s actually far simpler: I just dig on tangible credentials.

For this very reason, being on a guest list stresses me right out. I daren’t look behind me as I’m convinced I’m being shadowed by some fat-pawed security gorilla who’s got me pegged as a cheap ligger.

In reality, of course, no one ever bats an eyelid. The woman at Gate 5 handed me the grounds passes and funny little cardboard buttons, and relieved me of the weight upon my shoulders. Not the whole weight of course, as there was still the matter of locating the hospitality suite - but given the unambiguous guidance in my invitation (literally: it’s just opposite Gate 5) how hard could that be?

In case you’re unfamiliar with the grounds of the All England Croquet and Lawn Tennis Club, what’s opposite Gate 5 is Centre Court itself. So, in the absence of any obvious signposting, we found a chap in an official blazer loitering outside Centre Court and begged directions. And what glorious directions they were - taking us right to the far end of the grounds where the various corporate partners had their marquees - major corporate partners like Jaguar and HSBC, but not Robinsons.

Three further members of staff later and we were exactly where we started - except this time, we noticed the wee notice directing guests to the Robinsons Suite.

And oh, what a suite it was! As I stood there, just a flight of stairs away from the action, I suddenly felt sorry for those poor schmoes slumming it in the suburbs with Ralph Lauren. Inside was air-conditioned and spacious; outside on the balcony, meanwhile, was pleasantly shaded with a birds-eye view of Joe Public and the exquisite flower arrangements. A more perfect spot to sip our first Pimms of the day I couldn’t have imagined.

How's this for a chunky VIP pass?!

As we topped up our vim, two further fantastic things became clear: first, the guests in the room were all compers, so the atmosphere was one of genuine over-the-moon excitement; and second, the spectacle was set to exceed everyone’s expectations, as the second men’s semi was yet to be resolved. To this end, our lunch was brought forward so we could watch two sets of Nadal v Djokovic.

It didn’t take an expert to see that this was tennis of the highest calibre. These guys were so evenly matched that on any other day I’d have described the next couple of hours as epic. However, as the preceding semi ended 24 v 26 and lasted six and a half hours, the rivers of hyperbole were running dry.

Thanks to this unscheduled bonus, our afternoon tea was a bit of a frantic affair. I can’t imagine I will ever neck champagne at such a dangerous pace again, but rest assured plans are afoot for us to get a similar wodge of strawberries and cream next year.

Finally, then, it was time for the headline event.

Mrs Wasabi enjoying the hospitality ...
and if you squint hard enough, you might be able to see the Meghan Markle's barnet

The ins and outs of the match have inevitably been documented by writers far finer than I, so I’ll forgo the details, suffice to say that we were really rooting for Serena, but sadly it was not to be. What we did witness, however, was the climax of a legend’s year-long journey from intensive care to a grand-slam final, followed by one of the most wonderful examples of grace in defeat that anyone could hope to see.

Miss Williams didn’t simply congratulate her opponent for winning her first title, but shared her pleasure in that moment, while praising her for being an incredible person and a really good friend.

As for being the “super-human supermum" that the interviewer suggested she was, she replied, "No, I'm just me and that's all I can be … I look forward to just continuing to be back out here and doing what I do best … It was such an amazing tournament for me. I was really happy to get this far … I can't be disappointed. I have so much to look forward to - I'm literally just getting started".

The fact that one of the greatest winners of all time doesn’t take winning for granted is a massive takeaway, not just for athletes and sports fans, but for compers too. Like any seasoned comper, I have failed to win thousands of times. What’s more, I have every intention of continuing to do so. Indeed, I similarly refuse to be disappointed when things don’t go my way: if I’m looking back, it’s not because I’m lingering on what might have been; it’s because I’m enjoying past successes or learning from previous fails. Mostly, however, I’m looking forward, because I’m just getting started too.

Somewhat satisfyingly, the wise words of Wimbledon don’t end here either. As everyone trickled back into the hospitality lounge, the bartender leaned over to my comping buddy and whispered, “We’re closing the bar in ten minutes, so if I were you, I’d rack them up while you still can.”

For me, this is the best kind of advice as I can process it in a fraction of a millisecond, because, well, I'm just me and that's all I can be.

Prize Unboxing August 2018

So that was August... And I did eventually work out where the Russell Ayto book came from. At least, I think so, anyway!

Be Lucky!

Prize Unboxing July 2018

July has been hot! Not just literally, but in terms of wins too. I've been aberrationally successful, for which I'm endlessly grateful, and bracing myself for a super-drought as the world realises its error and the cosmic balance lurches back into place.

Possibly the first step in this regard was one of my prizes smashing before I got the chance to use it. Fortunately, it was only a small bottle of serum, but frustrating nonetheless.

Also, despite what I say in this video, the coat *is* the one I asked for - I just got muddled with the one I'd ordered for my other son! As for the football, I can confirm that the signatures are from regular civilians whose celebrity is based entirely on the fact that they happen to have the same name as someone else.

Most of my July wins are in this month's unboxing video. The largest, however, I'm saving for a forthcoming post as it really was rather cool...

Hope you enjoy the video - and be lucky!

Football coming home...

The FIFA World Cup used to be the cornerstone of my life. I got together with my other half during the 1998 tournament, and exactly four years later, we were married. Another four years on and we were still gorging on as many matches as we could fit around full-time work. Come 2010, however, our first-born was three months old and did not care for international football - not one little bit.

I was on the afternoon shift at that point, but every time I sat down, he’d wail. Watching Germany dissect England is excruciating at best, but there’s nothing like doing it while you slow dance with a mardy bairn to really put the boot in. It was at this point that I stopped watching football.

That’s not to say I stopped taking an interest, however, as I’d just learned about matched betting - the clever-dick form of gambling where you don’t end up out of pocket as the bookies kindly pony up the stakes for you. Now’s not the time for the full ins and outs of the hustle as they’re way too complicated to explain in a glib aside (though if you are interested, see Nikki Hunter-Pike's post), suffice to say that it was a boom-time for bookmakers running promotions to expand their social media reach.

888Sport, in particular, was on a mission to own the market, and was giving away free bets and branded merchandise left, right and centre - in the space of a year, its various score prediction and caption competitions had provided me with a branded polo shirt, rugby ball, laptop sleeve, three hoodies, two packs of cards and a set of poker chips, not to mention countless free bets and a £60 sportswear voucher.

Then came the big one - the World Cup score-prediction comp. At this point, they really lost their marbles, because in addition to prizes for the overall competition winners, they also encouraged entrants to set up their own mini leagues, and gave these players prizes too. How they worked out a scoring system for the mini leagues I’ve no idea. Truthfully, I wasn’t paying attention. All I knew was that I hadn’t made the top three in the main league, so I didn’t give it another minute’s thought. So, you can imagine my surprise when, a few weeks later, a £120 voucher to spend on sportswear turned up out of the blue.

Sadly, it wasn’t long after this that the penny dropped at 888 HQ and I was barred for being - quite literally -  a liability, as 888’s computers twigged that I was taking more money out of the company than I was putting in, so banned me from making any further wagers.

Disappointing as it was to call time on our relationship, lessons were learned and we both moved on: I stopped messing around and committed myself to comping properly, while 888 approached the next World Cup in a far more austere manner, with any suggestion of a re-run knocked squarely on the head.

Nonetheless, it is a truth universally acknowledged that where there’s a World Cup, there’s a prediction competition, and Brazil 2014 was no different. Filling the void left by 888 was a competition of even greater magnitude and generosity, which the Brazil Tourism Board had opened up to pretty much anyone, anywhere. This giveaway had over a hundred prizes, from vouchers to cameras to various Apple products. I didn’t make the top twenty, but still copped an iPod Nano, which was awesome - well, apart from the £30 of import duty I had to pay to receive it.

As this was my first year of comping during a World Cup tournament, I was only just starting to become aware of the sheer volume of competitions that spring up around it - not just the big-ticket giveaways from the official partners and sponsors, but also the numerous unofficial comps from companies that want to join in the excitement, but lack the deep pockets of companies like MasterCard or McDonald’s. For example, thanks to Carpetright, I walked away with an official England shirt; concurrent with this, I also won a tee-shirt of Archie Gemmill scoring against Holland in 1978 - which rounds out my heritage neatly.

The England shirt has served me well - not because I enjoy sartorial statements of nationalism, but rather because it’s super light-weight and doesn’t cling to my sweaty body when I play badminton. It’s also handy for entering football-related competitions, and to this end finally paid dividends this year when I won a giftcard and football from Screwfix for posting a picture of my best football cheer to Instagram. Considering that Screwfix was an official sponsor of the ITV coverage this year, surprisingly few people were entering its comps. Its daily Facebook giveaways were (as I discovered too late) getting fewer than 200 entrants, while this Instagram comp had barely a dozen. So, a lesson learned for next time is to check out all the TV partners too!

This year, I also won prizes from two completely unaffiliated companies - three £30 Decathlon vouchers and my choice of football shirt from the FIFA store. The football shirt came from a simple tag-and-follow comp on Instagram - again with barely a dozen entries. Unfortunately FIFA had sold out of my first, second and third choice of kit, so if you were wondering why there’s a picture of me on Instagram wearing the Japanese away strip, now you know.

The first Decathlon voucher, meanwhile, came from a prediction comp I’d found via Google before the tournament began. What I hadn’t clocked, however, was that the score prediction aspect was purely for fun, and that the question you had to bat away before entering said predictions was actually the tie-breaker for that round. You can therefore imagine my surprise when the promoter mailed to let me know that my throwaway comment - “5.30” - was one of the most creative responses to the question, “At what point of the working day are you most on top of your game?”

Any criticism you may wish to throw at the weakness of that response is well deserved - I dread to imagine the quality of the rest of the field that week. Still, if ever there was an example of “got to be in it to win it”, this was it. And, since we’re looking for takeaways, it was also a reminder of the importance of reading instructions!

In any case, you can be sure that I upped my game for the last few rounds. And yes, my renewed efforts did pay off, as I made it into the top three for the final two rounds, giving me a grand total of £90 to spend at Decathlon.

The other great thing about this year’s World Cup was England’s progress. Notwithstanding their overreliance on set-pieces and their charmed avoidance of top-notch opposition, the fact that the team advanced as far as it did was a boon for flash comps. To be sure, I drew a complete blank here, but again, some of these comps had ridiculously few entrants, so I’ll definitely be getting my Tweetdeck house in order for 2022.

At this point, it bears repeating that 2022 will be FIFA's first Winter World Cup, and in case I need to spell it out - that means it’s going to clash with the advents. With this in mind, I’m going to get my first prediction in early: it’ll be carnage!

How did your World Cup season go? Or did you focus on Wimbledon or some other event? Let me know in the comments section!

Prize unboxing June 2018

And so to June's wins! This roundup is notable for (a) the absence of the water bottle I won and (b) the awful face I make when my varifocals are sliding down my nose. I really must work on that...

There was also the matter of my Lucozade Made to Move win - but more on that another time.

In case you're wondering, the water bottle came from a local flash comp but didn't come in the post, so I totally failed to capture it on video. I'd apologise but I imagine you're over it already!

Be lucky!

Prize unboxing May 2018

A real random selection this month - happy watching!

Prize Unboxing April 2018

With apologies for tardiness, here's the prize unboxing for April. I also apologise for gurning at the camera halfway through when I thought it wasn't recording, and the ceaseless heckling from my second-born.

Be lucky!

A nice problem

There’s a down side to comping: it develops tastes, creates needs.

Take confectionery, for example. It wasn’t so long ago that my idea of aspirational candy was a chocolate Matterhorn. That was back when duty-free shops the world over made like Fort Knox and stacked their king-size Toblerones like gold bars, and Alan Partridge scarfed a lap-full while driving barefoot to Dundee. Without doubt, Toblerone was the acme of sophistication.

These days, however, it's become a staple. Partly that’s because I can get my fix at Poundland, and partly that’s because I have over the last few years won a silly amount of top-end chocolate.

This year, in particular, my wins have become increasingly fancy (or increasingly grown-up, as my lad might say), culminating most recently in this great stack from Octo.

Clearly, this is made for posher folk than I. Consider, if you will, Exhibit A: this 100 g bar of raw white chocolate with salted pistachios retails at £8.50! Translated into Toblerone, that kind of dough would score a kilo of chocolate with enough change for post-binge Alka-Seltzer.

You can probably see where I’m going with this - yep, it’s one of those problems that gets little sympathy: I’m becoming a chocolate snob - worse, a cocoa bore. I’m currently so flushed with the stuff that I’m sprinkling my morning porridge with goji berries coated in raw chocolate. I look like a right middle class ponce, even though I wouldn’t recognise a goji berry if I woke up in a sack of them.

My so-called problem is by no means limited to sugar and spice. I recently won some serum - man serum, to be precise. I was planning to let my wife use it, but at her behest I gave it a go. Which is to say, at her behest and under her direction, as I had not the first clue what it was for or how it should be applied given that my skincare regime had never graduated beyond patching cracked fingers with hand cream.

Fancy serum

And here we are: one week of half-heartedly following her guidance and the dry, flaky bags under my eyes are now just regular bags, albeit marginally less creased. Which is great - but given that childcare commitments mean I can work only part-time, the idea of ponying up £50 for another 30 ml of this elixir gives me the heebie jeebies.

That said, it could be worse. During the advents, I won a month’s worth of la-di-da serum for my wife. It retails at £200, which in terms of sustainability presents a lifestyle choice between slightly smoother skin and feeding our children.

Insanely fancy serum

Suddenly, my Toblerone habit pales into insignificance.

Has comping actually driven up your consumption of things you once considered luxuries?! Let me know in the comments below!

Unboxing March 2018

Here endeth the month - and it hasn't been a bad one! Here's a video of me and the short man opening parcels. Not shown here is the £15 in Google Play vouchers that my wife and I both won through the Oreo cookie hunt. I'm not convinced the hours were worth it, but that's another story!

Be lucky!

On belligerence

Sometimes I win. Sometimes I learn. And sometimes I do the same thing over and over again in the hope that things will turn out differently next time.

Some would call that the very definition of insanity. And sometimes they’d be right. Sometimes, however, it’s less clear-cut.

Case in point: I used the same Faces for Florida entry for three weeks in a row. After failing to pass muster on the first week, the likelihood of a subsequent win was slim to nil, but since I didn’t have any better ideas, my only option was to hope the rest of the field had a bad day.

Fanciful thinking? Maybe so, but a long shot is better than no shot, as Steven Bradbury found in the 2002 Winter Olympics when everyone else in the 1000m speed skating final fell over, leaving him to collect the gold.

Unfortunately for me, in this instance, the other entrants blew me out of the water. But on the plus side, I don’t have to worry about taking a volatile eight-year-old on a long-haul flight.

Then there was the time, about three years ago, when I tried to win a Weetabuddy. For the uninitiated, this recurring competition requires entrants to scatter fruit on their breakfast in a sufficiently artful manner that it looks like a face. I chose the path less travelled, and skewered fruit to my biscuit so it could stand up.

As luck would have it, the promoter was looking for balanced breakfasts rather than edible voodoo dolls, and my entry failed to make the grade. Not that I really minded - at that point I was in thrall to the comping monkey on my back, and entering every effort comp I could find, whatever the prize.

But I kept the picture. It wasn’t like it was well composed, or for that matter remotely clever. But I did love how perfectly it encapsulated the absurdity of comping - after all, who in their right mind would pin blueberries to their cereal just to win a fluffy Weetabix? And more to the point, why would anyone even want a fluffy Weetabix?

I can’t answer that last question, but I do know that my mojo was wanting a boot up the jacksie towards the end of last year, and on a whim, I entered the competition again. With the same picture.

Common sense would suggest that having failed once, the picture would only flop again. But common sense can bite me. I won that fluffy Weetabix. And my son loves it. At long last, he can hug his favourite cereal - something I’ll never manage with granola.

So, what’s my point? Simple! Stubbornness pays.

Has your persistence, belligerence or plain old dogged refusal to quit, won you any prizes? Let me know in the comments below!

Unboxing February 2018

Apologies for the lack of posts this month - more on that in due course. In the meantime, here's the fun bit - be lucky!

My Harry Potter Win: Part 2

Of all the queues, the one to actually commence the tour was the largest and most densely packed. It would probably have been less stressful had my children been on reins, so I will bear that in mind for future reference. That said, as the numbers built up, the oppressive hubbub worked wonders for intimidating them into line, and it was only another twenty minutes or so before we were in the Great Hall.

Many words come to mind on entering this cavernous space, but I’ll settle for ‘Gosh’. The room is so big that I’d always assumed it was shot on location. Well, you know what they say about assumptions. I’d love illustrate the vastness of the set with an awesome photo, but sadly my camera was giving me lip and I was unable to diagnose the problem while my offspring ran pell-mell about the place. Also, we had only about five minutes to take it all in, so by the time the children were contained, everyone was being booted out. In short, you’ll just have to take my word for it: gosh, indeed.

Next was the hangar full of props. Oh my. I can’t remotely do this justice. It’s not just costumes and wands in here, but rooms - whole rooms - like Harry’s dorm, the Griffyndor common room, Professor Umbridge’s office, the Weasley kitchen, and the potions classroom, with the forbidden forest and Platform 9 3/4 just around the corner (along with the Hogwarts Express). You’ve also got a first-hand introduction to the special effects in here - and not some basic show and tell affair either. You want to sit at Hagrid’s table or summon a broomstick? No problem. Heck, you can even buy a video of yourself riding that broomstick or sitting on the Hogwarts Express as it gets attacked by dementors - though you might want a word with your bank manager first, given that photos are (as I recall) £14 each and video footage £25 a clip.

Sitting at Hagrid's table - my eldest is a giant!

I didn’t mention the wand fighting lessons did I? Well, you’ll need them later on when you’re duelling with death eaters on the Hogwarts Bridge. In my case though, my kids were more interested in Hagrid’s motorbike and the flying car from the second movie, which were parked nearby, so the 10 inches of wooden dowel I was waving around like a prat was purely for my own benefit.

It’s about this point that refreshments are called for. Given that the WB studio is one of possibly four places in the world where one can buy butterbeer, we made a point of grabbing ourselves a beaker each. Which is to say, I bought a couple of beakers to share: at £6.50 for a half-pint or so, I’ve definitely bought cheaper champagne. It’s also horrifically calorific, and long-term use is practically guaranteed to require remedial dentistry. ‘But how does it taste?’, you ask. Imagine a blend of butterscotch and cream soda … My children hated it, and personally, I’d stick to the cheap champagne, but if you’re determined to rot your mouth, I understand that Flying Cauldron butterscotch beer is pretty similar.

Outside the refreshment area you can also have a nosey at the night bus and take a quick tour of the Dursleys’ house (again - I can’t believe this scenery was built for the movie - I honestly had to touch it to believe it!). You’re also only minutes away from the incredible Diagon Alley, but don’t get ahead of yourself - there’s all the CGI and robotic FX to take in first!

The Dursleys' front room

Just one of the treats on Diagon Alley

If, like me, your time in this zone is curtailed by one of your offspring having a tantrum while the other harasses the staff, the one thing you absolutely MUST experience is the bit where you get to control a fully-rendered animation of Dobby the house elf via real-time interactive motion capture. This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to make Dobby dab, dance the robot or whatever else takes your fancy.

The penultimate area is dedicated to the set designers - the unsung heroes of the franchise - the folks who, thanks to their vision, conceived the entire franchise. Their sketches offer a first-class insight into the production process and leave you genuinely in awe of their imagination.

Finally, it’s time for the money shot: the absurdly intricate 1:24 scale model of Hogwarts. That translates to a model almost 50 feet in diameter. I really can’t overstate the incredibleness of this structure - for reference, the man-hours put into building and reworking the model, if totalled, would exceed 74 years!

Hogwarts (only smaller)

So, all that remains is to exit through the gift shop. Here’s the sucker punch. Everything - but everything - is obscenely expensive. For example, the markup on relatively pedestrian pocket-money items, such as a pack of Top Trumps, is at least 50 per cent over the standard market rate for similar (but non-Potter) items. You want a magic wand? That’ll be £35 please. Understandably, my son wanted a souvenir, but when a chocolate frog costs a month’s pocket money, the world was hardly his oyster. He settled on a pair of Harry Potter glasses for £4 - of the quality you might expect from a Poundland fancy dress kit, that - yes - also contained other plastic tat. But his red mist for acquisition was at least sated and we could move on.

In sum then, the tour is plainly one of the most magical things I'll ever experience and I totally recommend it to anyone with only a passing interest in the Potterverse. I'd probably counsel against taking small children - or, more specifically, my children - but despite their best efforts, it was worth the wait. It's also worth mentioning that I'm really terrible at getting my act together, so if it hadn't have been for comping, I might never have got round to doing this. To this end, I'm also grateful to this hobby for giving me the nudge to get more out of life!

My Harry Potter Win: Part 1

Ten months after winning tickets to the Harry Potter tour, I finally had them booked. ‘Whaaat?!’ I hear you say, ‘Why?! Why did it take you so long?! How could you sit on something so stupidly exciting?!’

Point taken. But here’s the thing: I work freelance, and the very the nature of my work (or perhaps just my client) is so very last minute that it’s impossible to say when a quiet spell will be upon me. This makes it hard to forecast my schedule for the next day, never mind six months ahead like most people seem to be able to manage for this experience.

The other thing is that my lads are still small. The oldest has nightmares about Willy Wonka, while the youngest hides under the sofa cushions while Dobby the house elf is on screen. With this in mind, I figured there was a distinct chance that they might take the gloss off the experience.

As such, we waited about as long as we could before booking our visit, in the hope that they might man up a little. However, we never made it past the Chamber of Secrets DVD.

Not to be beaten, we thought we’d make the trip as exciting as possible by staying nearby, so that we could arrive first thing, without the stress of driving across country. I will confess that the experience of driving to the spa break I won a few months previously still loomed large in my mind, and I was anxious not to involve the RAC in our lives any more than strictly necessary.

So far so good. What I didn’t budget for was the four year-old going on a rampage and refusing to sleep till 10. The other one wasn’t much better. As I sat in a dark Travelodge room, drinking whisky from a mug while my wife snored, I reflected on how I’d envisaged the evening going differently.

The next morning, as you might have guessed, the youngest lad was so exhausted that his monstrous screaming fits appeared with the tedious inevitability of January's credit card bill. Given also that I was a few weeks into the stress and blues of a heinous work bender, the day ahead was never going to be easy.

Getting to Warner Bros Studios was a piece of cake. Getting inside was something else.

First we queued to get the tickets. This queue was short but painfully slow, as the dispensing machine was woefully inept. It was also a waste of time as I was unable to provide the telephone number that the promoter had used when booking the tickets, so the machine refused to recognise me.

As such, I joined the longer queue so I could chat with the counter staff. By this point, the antisocial behaviour of my eldest was at peak malevolence, so my wife removed both children from my line of sight.

After this queue, we joined the queue for bag checks. Finally, we joined the queue to get in.

Let’s just say it was a very British experience.

Nevertheless, we were now IN, and the excitement could begin…

[This enormous post continues tomorrow!]