It appears the makers of New Covent Garden soup have managed to irritate a vocal part of their customer base by running a competition which – shock horror – nobody won!
I know, it’s amazing. The concept that people enter a competition and nobody wins it. It seems that not everyone is a winner, baby, that’s the truth.
After buying the product, customers had to enter unique codes from boxes of soup or pudding into the competition website to ‘Win a £500,000 Farm’ at which point they were advised whether or not they had won a prize. There were 260,000 entries, and I must confess I’m not sure whether those were people, or cartons of soup and puddings consumed.
There is much muttering and chuntering that, as no one put in the code from the winning carton to claim the top prize, the soup company haven’t just picked a winner from the entries.
But if no one qualifies to win a competition, then a winner shouldn’t be made up.
Competitions like this are run under strict rules, it’s a tightly regulated area, and rightly so. To merrily mix my metaphors, changing horses halfway through the race isn’t cricket (and would be very difficult to do wearing wicketkeepers attire). Someone just threw away the package away, or put it in the freezer or – radical thought – couldn’t be bothered to do anything with the code that only gave them a one in who knows what chance of winning.
Apparently, some people feel ‘it’s not fair’.
Has the world gone completely insane? Well done, say I, to New Covent Garden Soup for not giving into those who apparently have never left primary school.
Apple Pie with Wensleydale 
I agree, that’s completely fair. But we eat a lot of CGS and I haven’t entered any codes so am left wondering if it’s my fault no one won!
I wonder if they know which area of the country it was sold in – will there be a pitchfork wielding mob going through dustbins?!
How bizarre, to be honest farming is hard work and I’m not sure they would actually want to win the prize. Anyway, just wanted to say love your fairycake photo, wish mine would look like that.
I didn’t see the rules so I’m not sure that it had to be a working farm, or just a farmhouse with a large vegetable garden! And thank you (the trick is to dip the freshly iced bun into the sprinkles which you’ve put on a plate – that way they stick and don’t go everywhere)
I entered that competition! I have to say I was hoping to win, sell it, and live off the proceeds, but still. Like you, I feel neutral about there being no winner. Obviously I’d like there to have been one; I’d like it to have been me! But it wasn’t. There you go…