The day I won a fabulous prize - to my chagrin

Once maximum PR has been extracted, the prizewinner is discarded like an old boarding pass

This is a tale, among other things, of broken promises, snobbery, baseball, clams, air travel, dodgy chairs and Clement Freud. And if that doesn't compel you to read on, I don't know what will. It is inspired by the success in Ireland's High Court last week of Jane O'Keefe, who was awarded €67,500 in damages because the low-cost airline Ryanair reneged on its promise to give her a lifetime of free flights.

Just to recap, in 1988, Ms O'Keefe, then a 21-year-old secretary, on a flight from London to Dublin, unwittingly became the millionth person to check in with Ryanair.

Amid great hullabaloo, attracting lots of positive publicity for the airline, she was given her prize – a contract entitling her to free Ryanair flights when and where she wanted, for as long as she wanted. And for nine years the arrangement went swimmingly, if that word doesn't confuse the issue, until, in 1997, she was told that she was being restricted by Ryanair to a mere 12 flights a year. She complained that the company was not honouring its promise, and in return received an earful of abuse, which is why a court case ensued, and how a successful publicity stunt turned into a public relations disaster.

I am glad that Ms O'Keefe emerged victorious, for I happen to know that it is by no means uncommon for a company to organise a promotion in which one person's good fortune is milked for beneficial public relations, only for the person to be discarded like an old boarding-ticket stub.

I know because it happened to me. In 1991, or thereabouts, I picked up a copy of a downmarket tabloid, in which there was a competition organised in conjunction with the airline Virgin Atlantic. The competition was intended to promote Virgin's new service to Boston, Massachusetts, and entrants had to answer a real tester: in which American state is the city of Boston?

The prize was fabulous: two return flights to Boston, three nights in one of the city's finest hotels, a celebratory dinner in its finest restaurant, tickets to see a Boston Red Sox baseball game at venerable Fenway Park, and $200 spending money. I filled in the answer, making sure to get the spelling right, and posted off the form.

A couple of weeks later I got a congratulatory phone call. I had made it through to the final 40, who were invited, with partners, to a "New England clambake" at a restaurant in central London. My then-girlfriend and I turned up and felt instantly and snobbishly out of place among all the shell suits, fake tans and white stilettos. I dare say that Clement Freud, who wore an air of bemusement throughout, felt the same.

He was the celebrity guest who was due to anoint the prizewinner. The competition had been organised by Freud Communications, the fledgling public relations company run by his then little-known son Matthew.

We slipped out of the reception and found our table, where my girlfriend's chair, unlike all the others, and unlike my girlfriend, was low-slung and lumpy. So we swiftly moved to exchange it for another at the same table, but then our fellow-diners arrived. Instead, I gallantly exchanged it for mine.

After dinner, Clement Freud invited us all to feel under our chairs. The winning envelope was taped to the bottom of my chair, previously my girlfriend's, nearly someone else's.

Like Jane O'Keefe, albeit on a lesser scale, we found ourselves at the centre of a melée of publicity. But once the newspaper, and Virgin, and Freud Communications, had used us for promotional purposes, their interest in us ceased.

Only after several letters, faxes and phone calls did we get our flight tickets. Nobody booked us into a hotel; we had to do that ourselves. Despite the fact that we had carefully arranged to be in Boston to coincide with two Red Sox games, the tickets were not forthcoming. The spending money was biked round to us on the morning of departure, but only after I had been made to feel like a scrounger, repeatedly asking for it.

We had at least been given a $50 voucher to spend at Anthony's Pier 4, "Boston's finest restaurant". It was hardly enough, even in 1991, to cover the cost of a celebratory dinner, but it was something. We were told we had to book the table ourselves. We did so, turned up, were shown to a table, and started tucking into the bread and olives. But the fiasco we had endured so far had made me paranoid. I showed the waiter the voucher. He fetched the manager. No, sorry, it had no validity. Politely, he showed us the door.

If it happened to us, and eventually happened to Jane O'Keefe, then it must have happened in countless promotions and competitions. As soon as maximum publicity has been extracted, the poor old prize-winner becomes valueless. Perhaps the answer is not to enter in the first place, thus avoiding the disappointment of losing, not to mention the frustration of winning.

b.viner@independent.co.uk