I thought there had been an accident. "Mum, quickly, you have to ring. NOW!" cried my nine-year-old daughter. I dashed upstairs to find her clutching a piece of paper and waving it about frantically.

"We've won, we've won, you have to ring this number," she yelled. The piece of paper turned out to be one of the many pieces of paper that tumble out of the Sunday supplements, littering the living-room floor.

HAVE U WON? It asked, before listing a number of prizes including a £250,000 dream house or cash equivalent, £5,000 kitchen and £1,000 gift vouchers. There was even a picture of the house - an ivy-clad pile in open countryside. On the other side was a scratchcard, which, with three matching symbols, was a winner. To my daughter's delight, ours was. I explained that all the cards were probably winners and the odds of getting the house were equal to those of martians landing on the Houses of Parliament. But she would not let it lie, and went on and on, stressing that someone, somewhere had to win it.

So it was that I ended up posting off an SAE (to ring cost around £8 a minute with the minimum call around 30 minutes), knowing it would come to nothing. A few days later the envelope came back, full of mailshots for this and that - they had clearly forgotten to include the set of keys to our dream home.

Has anyone ever won anything on those free scratch-off cards? The last time I was persuaded to send off something like that I received what was billed as an "expensive jewel" - a fragment of something resembling builders' aggregate, turquoise in colour and no bigger than a grain of rice. And I once got the promise of a digital camera, but only if I sent off £70 for postage and packing.

They always include pictures of happy winners from previous competitions - 'Mr Robinson', 'Mrs Smith'. Never any details of their home town. The card passed to me by my daughter even had a section entitled 'LOSER', with a cut-out profile of 'Mr or Mrs X' who, we are told "threw away their £250,000 winning card', alongside the message 'Don't let this be you." Do people really fall for this? I mean, if someone had thrown away their card how would anyone have known that they had won? I suppose I'm just bitter because I've never had so much as a dickie bird from them. It's like those lifestyle questionnaires that take six months to complete - the ones asking things such as this which toilet cleaner you use, where you buy it from and how regularly you squirt it up the u-bend. They always tempt you with prize draws for this and that - but all I've ever gained from them is the free pen that comes with the questionnaire.

But I can understand where my daughter is coming from. When I was about 14 I was sucked in by a photograph of a yacht on the front of one of those cards. It was like something from a Bond movie and, although I couldn't quite picture my dad steering it up the Tees, I answered the questions and sent it off. Soon after someone called selling insurance - I hadn't read the smallprint. The caller was not amused, and my parents were furious.

So will I be when the expected deluge of unwanted mail starts to arrive, as our address is sold on to billions of companies across the globe. I don't know how to tell my daughter the awful truth - she's already planning what colour her country house bedroom will be.

Updated: 09:32 Tuesday, August 30, 2005