Competition crazy
Thursday 30th April 2009
Phones rang off the hook and the air was filled with excited chatter. I had a receiver to each ear, and my mate, Sue, was manning another two landlines. Was this a busy call centre? Was it heck. It was the office in my three-bedroom house, or the 'nerve centre' of my operation. It had all started in January 1999, when my daughter, Alicia, now 10, was just 8 weeks old. On a whim, I'd entered a competition to win a motorbike on The Big Breakfast. I can't describe the buzz when Johnny Vaughan announced I'd won. It wasn't so much the bike. My boyfriend, Pete, 38, and I had decided to flog that for £1,500 towards a holiday to Australia. It was being a winner which put me on a high. The very next morning, I gave my daughter, Janine, then 12, the answer to that day's radio phone-in question, and she won a widescreen telly. Just weeks later, I won a holiday to Venice, too. 'Are you the only one entering these comps?' Pete joked. He wasn't laughing when he got the phone bill, though. We'd gone from spending £25 a month to £125 a month. 'We're not made of money,' he raged. 'You've got to spend money to make money,' I snapped. He can't have been too cross, though. He proposed in Venice.
Not long after that, I got hooked on a cable show that ran competitions every 15 minutes between 5pm and midnight. I won three prizes on my very first night, a trip on Concorde, electrical goods and tickets to an England match at Wembley. Holidays in LA, Denmark and Majorca followed, and I soon cottoned on to a few things. Like the fact you rarely got through first time you called. So I got a second phone line installed. Pete rolled his eyes, but he didn't say no to coming with me to the Bahamas on a holiday I won. While we were there, we married on the beach, and as we stood on the sand outside our luxury five-star hotel, I felt so lucky. Back in the UK, my friends and family started calling me the Competition Queen. 'Get us a holiday, Bernie,' they'd joke. I was more than happy to give my prizes away. But I was becoming obsessed. By the time my son, Peter, was born in 2001, I was spending eight hours a day doing competitions. It wasn't hurting anyone… or so I thought, until my local radio station, Southern FM, barred me from entering because I'd won seven holidays in a week!
I know what you're thinking. How could I win every time? To start with, I knew when to call. If they said they were doing a competition in a couple of songs' time, I'd call 20 seconds before the second song ended. I realised that the question was always about the destination, so I'd swat up on my geography, capital cities, even the height of landmarks. Being barred meant I just swapped to other stations, and in one three-month period in 2002, I won nine cars. Now, here I was, in May 2004, with a crowd of mates helping me man my four BT landlines. The previous month's £6,000 phone bill was a small price to pay. Five months later, Capital Radio ran a competition where they played a noise and callers had to guess what it was. Nobody could guess the squelchy sound. But after three kids, I knew it was a baby feeding. I started dialling… Hold on a minute, I thought. They won't want to put a right answer through in the first week. 'So what do you think the answer is?' the producer asked. 'It's a mop being squeezed,' I lied. Next thing I knew, I was on air. Only then, when I was asked the question again, I changed my answer and won £25,000.
It was all going so well until May 2006. Magic FM were running a £10k-a-day giveaway. Unbelievably, I won every day. First as me, then using Janine's name, then my 65-year-old mum Jackie's, then my mates Grace and Alice's, and my sister Terri's, 42. I'd always give them a cut of the winnings, but when it came to collecting our prizes, there was a problem. 'You need to come for a voice check,' the producer explained. 'Er… OK,' I gulped. When I looked at the terms and conditions, I realised you couldn't enter on behalf of anyone else. So I phoned Grace. 'I'll never sound like you,' she protested. She had a point. Her Wigan accent was nothing like my southern one. My other mate, Alice, was Jamaican. But me, Terri, Mum and Janine all did the tests. I passed, so did Janine. So the station paid out, but they refused to give Mum and Terri the money. It wasn't the only problem. By now, I'd started getting a bit of hassle from an old friend who wanted a cut of my winnings. So in October 2006, I changed my name by deed poll to Maria, my aunt's name.
A month on, Magic FM started their Mystery Voice competition. There were three voices to identify and the first two were easy. Ex Corrie star Sarah Lancashire, and Hollywood actress Anjelica Huston. But the third voice had everyone stumped. It had been running for six months, when I heard the song Lonely No More by Rob Thomas. Suddenly, it clicked. 'It's him!' I screamed to Pete. Heart racing, I called in using my new name, Maria Crosskey. A moment later, the DJ, Gary Vincent, told me I'd won the biggest ever radio prize, £168,000. I was over the moon, but 10 minutes later, someone from the radio station phoned back. 'We need you to come in for an ID and voice test,' the woman said. 'I'm off on holiday,' I said. 'I'll send you my driving licence.' When I got back from Kenya, the station said they needed more ID. I knew you could buy identity cards online for £20, so I bought a couple and planned to take them with me when I went to do my voice check. But two days before I was due to go, the old friend who'd been hassling me beat me up. Bruised, on crutches and with clumps of hair missing, I could hardly go and collect my winnings, let alone pose for publicity shots.
In a state, I called my aunt, Maria. 'I'll sort it, love,' she said. Three weeks on, she phoned. 'I've had a letter to say I won't be getting my prize,' she explained. 'I took my ID to the station, but then they made me do a voice test.' With her East End a accent, she sounded nothing like me. Still, I wasn't giving up. 'I'll email them to explain,' I said. It was useless. No matter how hard I tried, they kept saying no. Two months later, four police officers turned up and confiscated my computer and my phones. I was arrested and taken to Worthing Police Station, where I was charged with four counts of fraud. Suddenly, the realisation hit me. I could go to prison, I panicked. I was released on bail and lost a stone through stress. My whole body was shaking, when, 10 months later, Maria and I appeared at Southwark Crown Court. I agreed a plea bargain with the prosecution. I said I'd plead guilty if the charges against my aunt were dropped and I got my house and car back, which had been seized. 'I want to know Pete and the kids are all right,' I explained. Thankfully, they agreed, but I had to wait a month to be sentenced. In the dock, I held my breath. 'You have undoubted talent,' Judge Nicholas Lorraine-Smith said. 'But you're an obsessive. You entered radio competitions when you knew you were not allowed to. On these occasions, you used somebody else's name.' I was given a 40-week sentence suspended for two years, 150 hours community service and was banned from entering any radio or telly competitions for two years. I also had to pay £11,000 legal costs. My body sagged with relief. Now, my competition days are over. I can't pretend it's easy, but I'm filling my time writing a book telling people how to win competitions… Legally of course!