Lucky Heather

"I won a year's supply of dog food once," she admits. "We don't have a dog! I think I sold it to neighbours at a very cheap price!"

The 68-year-old semi-retired legal secretary from Escrick is the last person you'd expect to have a home filled with unwanted tins of dog food. A bell-ringer and keen bridge player, she's a former Evening Press columnist and still a regular contributor to its letters pages.

Yet she admits that since she won her first prize - a bottle of champagne - in 1982, her attitude towards entering competitions has been almost obsessive. And her shopping habits have changed completely.

Her long-suffering husband Peter has had to get used to the house being filled with packets of cereal he doesn't like and tins of food he wouldn't normally touch.

"My husband says 'you mustn't buy something we're not going to use'", Heather admits.

"But as soon as I see that marvellous word 'win', I have to buy whatever it is. I will eat anything that has a competition attached. Crunchy nut cornflakes have a competition on at the moment. We don't really like them but we're having to eat them to get rid of them.

"I remember once I had to collect tins of Heinz food for the labels. We had loads of unmarked tins, and we never knew whether we were going to open a tin of beans or a tin of pears!"

There's method in her madness, though. While she may not be quite in the league of American woman Evelyn Ryan, who managed to keep ten children fed and housed during the 1950s and 1960s on the proceeds of her competition wins, Heather's no slouch.

Since 1982 she reckons she's won no fewer than 40 holidays and weekend breaks, no end of kitchen appliances and electrical goods, several bicycles, a motor scooter and a year's supply of nappies for her first granddaughter.

One of her oddest wins - from a competition in a DIY magazine - was a car port. She and Peter already had one. "So we sold it to a neighbour for a very good price!"

But her best wins to date were the brand new Citroen AX Jazz she won in October 1990 in a Principles competition - and a Timeshare flat on the Costa del Sol.

She sold the Citroen without ever having driven it - she already had a Mini - and she admits that she and her husband Peter have yet to visit the Timeshare, even though she won it in 1995.

"It's a villa for six people for Christmas week," she says. "But we've never actually been there." Which is not to say the win has been wasted. One of the great things about owning a Timeshare, she says, is that you can swap with other Timeshare owners. "So we have gone every year to different places!"

Heather reckons that on average, she enters 20-30 competitions a month. So hooked is she on her 'hobby' that, to make sure she doesn't miss any, she subscribes to a magazine which details all the competitions being run each month and how to enter them,.

She even registered with two people who have made a business out of sending out entry forms to competition addicts.

She's by no means alone. There are thousands and thousands of people out there doing the same thing, she says. "Doing competitions is in the top 10 of hobbies."

Winning a car or Timeshare is one thing, however. Even Heather admits some of the competitions she enters are a little odd. Like the dog food, for example - or the time she bought loads of packets of pet bird food to enter a competition, even though she and Peter didn't have a bird.

In such cases, she admits, it's the simple buzz of entering that draws her on - that and the thrill of winning, whatever it is she's won. There will always be someone who can make use of a year's supply of bird food, she points out, even if it's no use to her.

But the great thing about entering competitions, she says, is the sense of anticipation and excitement. "You never know what the postman is going to bring," she says. "It's such a lovely feeling."

Her favourite competitions remain those where you have to complete a tie-break sentence. You know the type: say, in 12 words or less, what is so special about Kleenex. She loves the challenge of trying to find something fresh and witty to say, preferably in rhyme. "They're a tissue not to be sneezed at!" was her entry for the Kleenex competition - for which she won a holiday in Italy.

Sadly, she says, more and more competitions these days are the ones where the winner's name is drawn out of a hat. "They rely on luck, and I'm not very lucky!" she says. "And even if you do win, you feel you haven't really justified the prize. I prefer to feel I've done something to earn it!" Which doesn't stop her entering, of course.

There are two prizes she hasn't won yet, which she'd love to one day: a trip on the Orient Express, and a cruise. "But for most people who do competitions, their aim is to win a car," she says. "So I've fulfilled that!"

Heather's tips

Tie-breakers

- Try to be original and funny - and write it in rhyme if you can

- Be sincere

- Never be smutty or crude

Out-of-a-hat competitions

- Send pretty postcards rather than plain ones

- Send as many entries as you can - although check, because some competitions say one entry only

- Don't send outsized postcards: they may just get thrown away

General

- Enter everything and anything you can. You won't win if you don't enter!

- When you fill in the entry forms, write neatly and clearly however small the form

- Always check the closing date and make sure you get your entry in a week before

Updated: 09:22 Tuesday, March 12, 2002