WIN WIN WIN

My wife loves yoghurt – but only in the small single serving pots. The larger buy-in-bulk-and-save tubs make her sick. Even a mention of them forces her to emit that gag sound like she’s about to throw up.

She has a few hang-ups like this. The vomit noise can also be brought about by a picture of Tom Jones; sometimes merely his voice on the radio.

I have my own quirks. For instance, if I buy a book, magazine or newspaper I don’t like anyone else to read it before me. Also: When dining I try to get a bit of everything from my plate onto my fork with each bite, thereby ending with a neat sample of the entire meal for my last taste – if I finish the meat before the veg, and am left with a bit of chicken sans the accompanying slice of carrot, a small wave of sorrow flows through me.

Granted, if someone reads my copy of Empire or I have a few chips left over after my burger I don’t want to hurl, but sometimes psychological pain is worse than physical.

My mum has a friend who is a compulsive competition enterer. The prize is unimportant, and whether one can win a holiday in Spain or a year’s supply of anal bleach she will enter it regardless.

Of course she wins a lot of stuff she will never use – like power tools and the complete works of Fifty Cent – but you can’t argue that if you’re gonna succumb to a bit of OCD then that’s one to go for.

Back in the day competitions were all about sending in a postcard with your name and address on. These days it’s on your mobile or online.

My advice: go for online.

Driving around one day long ago I kept hearing a radio competition centred on the new Whitney Houston album. They were incessantly playing her new ‘hit’ about how she looked or felt like a Million Dollar Bill and I couldn’t help thinking that the only million dollar bill I knew of was the Zimbabwean one, worth about one Rand or eighty pence, and that was how I usually felt after a big night out drinking tequila and pepper-spray. After a while I got so irritated I entered the damn competition by texting the relative number.

I didn’t win a cd, but what I did receive was non-stop messages from the competition sponsor. And being that Whitney’s primary target market was middle-aged female divorcees meant that the people behind it sold things like pills for menopause and books such as Eat Pray Love.

So in future I’d obviously go for the online option with a fake email address. If I’m lucky I’ll win a Tom Jones dvd or a lifetime supply of big tubs of yoghurt.