The reason I ask this is because very recently I sponsored a local leisure centre who did a sponsored swim for Sports Relief and between them swam the distance that David Walliams swam. Anyway, as I sponsored them online I was consequently entered into a raffle. To be honest, I only half looked at this because, 1) I sponsored them because of the cause and what they were doing, and 2) I never seem to win any competitions! Anyway, I received a facebook message (not sure why there and not my work email...) asking if I'd sponsored them and they let me know that I'd won the prize in the raffle! I was very eager to find out what I'd won... and it is a brilliant, albeit, a bit random prize... I won a junior 7-10 year old's bike! I'm by no means ungrateful, but it seemed like a random prize as it's obviously a bit selective as who you can give it to! Needless to say, I've put it up for sale on Ebay as I have no use for it and don't know anyone in that age group who would benefit from it!

What have other people won that has appeared a bit odd?

I won a clarinet! (as barry-clari can vouch for)

It wasn't really that odd, since it was at a CASS day, but when I tell non-musical acquaintances that I won a clarinet in a raffle they are more than a little bemused. I also won a clarinet stand a couple of prizes earlier and was explaining to the very nice lady sitting next to me that I would give it to a friend since I was a sax player whne my name was called out for the main prize!

I did used to play clarinet to a reasonably competent level, but I have to admit that this one has only been played seldom and not terribly well, mostly because I just can't find the time to fit it in. It's not only the clarinet that's neglected though, the alto sax has barely seen the light of day for the last 9 months, I really do seem to have become a tenor specialist.

I have vague memories of winnig a purple teddy bear in my late 20s

Wow! That's an amazing prize! Beats my bike

A set of four interactive talking teletubbies.

They were each about 12 to 18 inches tall when seated. You sat them in a circle and squeezed their hands to turn them on. They then said hello to each other and could detect which ones were present, and then said various phrases and made toast eating noises. Our youngest was about a year old at the time and enjoyed playing with them, but in the shops they were ?50 for two, so ?100 for the set. I wouldn't have paid anything like that for them. When she out grew them I gave them to a friend who has younger children, and they were appreciated there.

I always find the bran tub simpler

My daughter won a years membership of the Friends of the BBC Phil. Not a bad prize for a musician but I do wonder how she managed to win when she didn't have a ticket

I don't buy raffle tickets because I live in fear of winning any of the prizes. But among the prizes on one particular raffle, I saw a cushion and a rug. Hmm.

I managed to win a metre high teddy in a raffle I didnt enter. I discovered later a number of colleagues entered on my behalf.....the bus driver tried to charge me a child's fare on the bus home.

Not quite the same but I do have vague memories of drawing out a prize winner for an Easter Egg raffle when I was little - I did my duty and was about to leave the stage when the organiser stopped me, turned me round and made me look at who was coming up to claim the prize - my dad! Even better, he let me pick the egg for him!!

I attended a football presentation for my som with a few friends and we all bought raffle tickets.
My best friend won a limousine and driver at her disposal for a day. I won a plastic container of cotton wool balls and cotton buds!

Competition prizes, two: one for writing a poem about greenfly for the Chip Book Club - it was an Oddball the dog prize of a postal order for about 50p, I think.....and the second was a photographic enlarger, but without its transformer for filling in a crossword about cameras from Amateur Photographic.

Then there was the Staff Lottery - I'd joined it not expecting anything to come out of that, and got a good few quid for that one, two weeks after doing so.

And finally, in a raffle, a book called "Rediscovering Pastoral Care" by Rev. Dr Alastair Campbell, who at the time was my landlord: I was a first year medical student living in his house, he was worried that I wasn't very sociable and had suggested I go out to the New College Burns Supper. I should explain that New College was the faculty in which he worked at the time, and was the home of the Faculty of Divinity. Those who know me will realise the ridiculousness of such a situation.....the irony was that he was also foremost in medical ethics, and he'd donated the prize - had he known I was going to win it, then he'd have put up his book on Ethics instead. I still have the book, and have even read it .

Not an 'odd' prize but rather a special one...my OH posted a leaflet for a prize draw run by the now defunct One-To-One mobile phone company - forgot all about it, then phoned me at school one morning to say, 'We seem to have won a prize'.

It was a trip to New York on Concorde and 3 nights at the Plaza Hotel!!!!!!! While we were there we thought, 'Let's get married', so we did, in Manhattan City Hall...had a tuna sarnie in the World Trade Centre then back home in bucket class.

Don't think I've ever won anything else!

I recently won a toy llama from a place that sells wonderful South American beans. It's very cute, but one of our cats thinks it needs exterminating...

One of my sons came out of junior school one day clutching an enormous box. He'd won a raffle prize at the school fete, but we hadn't stayed long enough for the draw. The box contained an alarm clock - not just any alarm clock, but a large model of the Starship Enterprise. And instead of the usual ringer, when the alarm went off a voice shouted, 'The Enterprise is under attack! Wake up and do something!'

He had only had it a few weeks when we were awakened at 2am by a voice telling us that the Enterprise was under attack. The offending item was relocated to the garage and never heard again.

That reminds me of the duck we had that quacked "Old macdonald had a farm" when you squeezed it. It had an unfortunate habit of quacking it in the middle of the night, when it was not only not being squeezed, but was turned off!

A leg of prosciutto! Would have been a great prize but I was pregnant at the time so couldn't eat it. I got it sliced up and shared it out with friends and neighbours.

A live rabbit which I was meant to kill and cook. Needless to say I paid 50 euros for a hutch and Bunny lived to a ripe old age.

When my brother was at primary school he won a bottle of aquavit at a school fair. They just gave it to him, not to our parents or anything. Hardly appropriate for a 10 year old boy

I once won 15p in an art competition

that reminds me of the talking pikachu cuddly toy I had at university.... it appeared to be on the same frequency as my desk lamp because it always used to say "pikachu" when I turned the lamp on My Turkish neighbour in my hall of residence found this very disturbing and wouldn't go near pikachu in case it was possessed by an evil spirit.... I think she was joking though....

slightly back on topic, I once won a set of "puddle lane" books. I loved puddle lane so was quite pleased.

My son - aged 10 at the time - won a bottle of very nice whisky in a raffle at the school summer fair. He was very annoyed as he had his eye on something else. In the same raffle my 12 year old daughter won a TV. I have never won anything

I've only once won a raffle prize. It was a wonderful prize of a rather large television. The only problem was that it was on my last night of living in the USA, and not only had my furniture already been shipped, but it wouldn't have worked in the UK anyway. I donated it back to be redrawn

*vouches*

Strangest raffle prize? A decorative toilet roll holder, in the style of a doll

A whoopy cushion....

I once won a big basket of fruit. Lovely.

Love it!!

Not sure I could quite see that looking at home in Clari Towers...

At the local French primary school, in the first half of the school Christmas lotto, my two sons won :

a - box of chocolate snails
b - pots/pans/set of towels/assorted other stuff
c - envelope with gift voucher saying we'd won a turkey
d - 'surprise' cardboard box.

This was all great and hunky-dory until

a - we got given the cardboard box, and found it contained a very large, ready-for-the-pot rabbit
b - went to see the lady about collecting the Christmas turkey and had one of those cross-purpose conversations with me wondering why she was asking which car I'd be driving to come and pick it up - and then suddenly realising that it was a LIVE turkey we'd won
c - seeing that in the second half of the lotto, there was a live piglet to be won !

At which point, I dragged sons off, claiming we'd won enough and that I already had enough on my plate trying to think how to explain to him-indoors that we were now proud owners of one rabbit and one turkey, and that a piglet would be pushing his 'love' of nature just one step too far . . .

.

In university I loathed Microsoft, and Microsoft inevitably came to campus recruiting. They somehow dug up my CV from the campus CV book and asked if I would come to the recruiting talk for a chat. I really didn't want to go but they were quite persistent and kept asking so I decided that I would go and make a nuisance of myself. I did, and I asked lots of silly questions like "why is Word so big and bloated and still doesn't work" - not necessarily proud of myself for doing this now as I have no idea what it achieves rather than annoying people, but I was young(er) and stupid(er) then.

Everyone who came to the talk was entered into a raffle, and the winner of the little handheld computer was... me. I think that was embarrassing for all involved. It was a rubbish thing - couldn't get anything to run on it as it was a lousy version of Windows Mobile that was slow and horrible. (this was many years ago now..)

(as an aside, I really am laughing out loud seeing that livestock appears to be a popular raffle prize in France. especially rabbits.)

Yes, remind me not to buy any raffle tickets in France.

Not a raffle but I once had a pupil's mother phone me up to make sure that I really did (as her daughter claimed) want a kid (ie baby goat) as an end of term thank-you present

*wonders idly if they ever do a grand prize of a pair of rabbits...*

Apologies for side-tracking but I've always thought that our rabbit must have been born under some amazing lucky star - and that there's a great 'earthy' disney film waiting to be made. . .

Picture the scene : Down at the farm (or 'a la ferme' to give a bit of atmosphere) our Bunny was THE rabbit chosen from the 30 or 40 others to be the prize raffle bunny.

Then, who should win him but the soft-hearted English family, with sonny jim taking him home saying ' no one's going to eat MY rabbit'.

And so, for the next 12 months, Bunny lived the life of riley in the boiler room, bounding around, getting fed all the veggie scraps.

But then - dark days - cue music . . .We are moving from our rented house, the kids have lost interest in the rabbit, the new tiny place we're renting for three months has no room for a rabbit and I tell them that the kindest thing would be to give it to the neighbour (who keeps rabbits for eating). Yes, it'll end up in the pot but quickly and without pain.

They refuse and want to 'set him free' in the field. Brother-in-law, the vet, tells them that this is cruel, it'll not survive and just end up as doggie dinner. But they insist (all that 'liberty' stuff at school).
So the day we move, Bunny is set free.

But I can't find the cat and so two days later I drive back and start calling for the cat.
At which point, up pops the neighbour, shouting that she's found him.
But, no it's not the cat she's found, but Bunny - she came round to do some spring-cleaning for the landlord and the rabbit had hopped back about 200 m from the field and was hiding behind the big flower pot at the front door!

So I tell her to please keep the rabbit, not to tell the kids and enjoy eating it, it's had a good life.

At which point she says she's happy to keep the rabbit but, if it's all the same to me, she won;t eat it because did I know that it's a very healthy rabbit (pleased to hear it) and a male (no, didn't know, whatever) and that their male rabbit was getting a bit long in the tooth, so she'd put Bunny in the girls' rabbit pen and supposedly Bunny was having a ball and performing superbly !

Well, way to go, Bunny, I said . . .

^^^ seems like it was Bunny what really won the raffle there?!

My father worked for a paint company, and would usually donate a few quart tins of gloss white to any raffle.

It seemed an odd thing to win, but nobody ever complained!

SB

(For the benefit of younger members here, a Quart is two pints, or 1136 millilitres!)

And did you?!

No, I most definitely did not, particularly as I lived in a flat at the time

And another French rabbit story...
When my younger daughter was about six, they did a science project on things growing. They planted seeds and watched them grow, for example, and one pupil bought in a baby rabbit at regular intervals which they weighed and measured. Several months into the project my daughter noticed that the rabbit's fur was no longer exactly the same shade of brown and asked the teacher why. While the teacher (who had been informed of the real reason) was trying to think up a suitable answer, the little boy whose parents owned the rabbit said: "Oh we ate the other one at the weekend so my Mum said to bring this one instead because they're both out of the same litter and no one will know the difference"

I rarely win raffles but often entered them at the smaller dog shows I went to because the funds went to support the Clubs. Prizes are usually a packet of dog chews or a box of chocolates donated by folk attending the show.

At one of the smaller shows I won a pair of miniature clogs, about three inches long, complete with a chipped painted picture of a dutch girl on each one. They were also extremely grubby and covered in dust.


There were a few 'batty old wifies' at this show and this was obviously somebody having a clear-out and thinking they were donating valued prizes

Very true.

I recall our Rector's wife was very put out when she won a prize at a church Autumn Fayre which she had donated two years previously, having won it the year before that!

I cannot remember what is was now, but I seem to recall it was one of those 'must have' prizes handed out by the Reader's Digest when you were on the way to their million pound prize.

Which reminds me; I must call the Readers Digest to find out where our promised cheque got to.

SB

Aww!

I still refer to paint tins sizes as quarter, half, and gallon.... and yes I did pure SI metric at secondary school (A Level maths, physics and chemistry) in the 70s so never used imperial measure after primary school.