Comps

When you launch a competition or promotion you can never tell how many people are going to enter.

Once - and I think I've mentioned this before - we decided to give away £1,000 a week over the course of a month.

It bombed. On one of the weeks we hardly got a single entry, and the first person who phoned up ended up pocketing the money.

It was only the fear of getting arrested for breaching the Gaming Act that stopped me phoning up friends and family and urging them to cash in quick.

Looking back, the fact readers had to dial a premium rate number didn't help, nor did people's natural cynicism of free money give-aways.

Anyway, a couple of weeks ago we launched a competition asking kids to draw a picture of their mum. The winning entry gets £1,500 of Allders vouchers.

It was a slow start, and I thought 'here we go again'. But things went a bit nutty this week, and there are now hundreds upon hundreds of entries sitting on promotions manager Kim Fyfe's desk.

It's good news for me in terms of sales, but not such good news for the people who have to scan the photos in and lay them out in the special supplement I've now decided we need to do in time for Mother's Day.

I haven't broken the delightful news to the production editor yet, but he's had quite an easy week so I'm sure he'll react with grace and good humour.