Thank you to everyone for your entries, first of all. I had fun reading hundreds of identical messages on Twitter, and methodically noting them all down.
But (as the cliche rumbles) there has to be a winner. And, on this occasion, I’m overjoyed to proclaim that the prize of 5 bottles of Wine Society goodness will go to Martin McCann, aka bar1ibrary.
Congratulations to the aforementioned gentleman, whose first words (tweeted) to the assembled press pack upon hearing the news were as follows:
‘I’m honoured. Actually I’m flabbergasted. Thank you and thank the random number generator.’
Indeed.
Anyhow, it was heaps of fun, wasn’t it? And I wouldn’t be at all surprised if I were to run another wine competition in the future. So y’all should subscribe (by email or RSS) to make sure you don’t miss it. Yah?
The method
In case you’re interested, here’s how I randomly selected the winner. I’d been logging each entrant (monitored via Tweetdeck hashtag alerts) in a spreadsheet.
I then used this handy online random number generator to, well, generate a random number — between 1 and 250 (the number of entries). The number it threw up (8, as it happened) corresponded to the row of the spreadsheet in which our friend bar1ibrary’s entry was logged.
So now you know.
Go on Marty!