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I won a year’s supply of pies on Ant & Dec’s Saturday Night Takeaway – I ate them for months & gave loads of prizes away
ANYONE who’s ever watched Ant & Dec’s Saturday Night Takeaway will have no doubt dreamt of winning the show's jackpot.
At the end of each episode of the ITV weekend favourite the Geordie duo give the audience the chance to bag a whole host of prizes featured in the adverts of a popular midweek programme.
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The 'Win the Ads' game prizes range from exotic holidays, luxury cars and even thousands of pounds and Jenni Foster-Smith was lucky enough to have the chance to play.
But she never imagined she might win.
“My sister sent me the application after she’d spotted it on Facebook and I filled it out for a laugh,” Jenni, 38, tells Fabulous in an exclusive interview.
“I never thought I would even get on the show, let alone take home the jackpot.”
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The mum-of-one, who lives in Cambridge, with husband Andy, 38, and their five-year-old son, says that while choosing a contestant from the audience may seem completely random on TV, there is far more planning involved than you might think.
“I received a call a few weeks after filling out the form, the producers called and asked me to share some funny stories about myself,” she recalls.
“They obviously liked hearing about my fear of baked beans because three days later they asked me to come to the studio.”
On the show, the hosts select a member of the audience to be in with a chance of playing for the prizes.
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“The audience is divided into three sections and it’s only the middle section that is in with a chance of being selected,” she says.
“You can bring a plus one but they’re not put in the ballot.
“In the queue all the people who have been selected to possibly participate swap notes on what happened in the news that week as that is what the questions are based on.”
Back in 2017, Jenni was selected from the pool of people who had qualified and during the first round of questions she got seven correct.
Every time a question is answered correctly, the contestant can select a number from a board, with a prize hidden at random behind each number.
Players can either keep the prizes they won or play to win all 16 prizes with one final question. Answer incorrectly and you lose them all.
“I had bagged a boiler, a holiday and a few smaller prizes during the first round so I was doing all right,” Jenni says.
“But I was always going to gamble.
I had bagged a boiler, a holiday and a few smaller prizes during the first round so I was doing all right - but I was always going to gamble
Jenni Foster-Smith
“Weirdly, I had read an article about the final question on the train down, and it was what mobile phone was being relaunched.
“I knew it instantly, a Nokia 3310.”
Jenni walked away with all 16 prizes which included a Suzuki Ignis, a week’s holiday to Croatia, Eurostar tickets, an Edinburgh getaway, a Dyson bundle as well as an heartburn medicine and a year’s supply of Pukka pies.
“Admittedly nobody wants 250 pies,” she says.
“I was given the option of having a truck load delivered or having vouchers for the pies to use within a year.
“It was a real slog to get through to be honest as my local Tesco only does two flavours, chicken and steak and kidney.
“At one stage we were averaging 2-3 pies a week which became a bit of a chore but I worked out I could just put the vouchers towards my weekly shop instead.
“They are delicious but nobody needs that many pies!”
Of her thousands of pounds worth of prizes, Jenni’s favourite was not the new car or the luxury European getaway.
“My favourite prize was actually choosing a bed from Dreams, and I went for one that had a TV that comes out of the end of it,” says Jenni, who runs a small bakery business.
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“I still have it and always tell my son to be careful when he’s doing a roly poly on it not to break my Ant & Dec bed.”
While three holidays might seem like a dream come true, Jenni says that she struggled to get through them.
“We had already got a few holidays booked for that year so it was a bit of a struggle,” Jenni admits.
“You are given a very strict time constraint to take these holidays so we had to trim two days off our Croatian trip.
“We ended up giving our weekend away in Edinburgh to my parents, although we did make it to Paris but had to pay for our own accommodation.”
It wasn’t just the weekend break that Jenni ended up passing on.
“I had just bought a new car so I ended up taking my Suzuki back to the dealership in exchange for slightly less than its £18k price tag,” she says.
“We had a boiler ourselves so that went to my sister and the Curry’s fridge was redundant as we’d just had a new kitchen fitted.
“In the end I was able to use the £2,000 value at Curry’s to buy items for the local children’s hospice.
“Admittedly there was one prize we didn’t use. It was 15 tickets to the screening of the new Lego movie, but I didn't use it so that was my worst prize.”
Jenni says that prizes aside, the experience of being on the show was her biggest win.
At one stage we were averaging 2-3 pies a week which became a bit of a chore
Jenni Foster-Smith
“I have always been a huge fan of Ant & Dec,” she says.
“I had grown up watching them on Byker Grove and I love I’m a Celeb so it was just unbelievable to be part of the show.
“I remember being in the green room and a fellow audience member asking if we felt lucky.
“We had been through a failed round of IVF at the time so we really hadn’t felt lucky but it just shows things can change.
“I never felt luckier.”
A spokesperson for ITV told Fabulous: “You need to apply to take part in Win the Ads- we say this verbally as a call to action within the show every week.
“After the application, there is a call with the production team because due to the high value prizes that are on offer we have to do all of the protocol and necessary background checks, and ensure the applicants comply with all the eligibility criteria, which are all standard TV production procedures.
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“We are very clear within the show itself as well that ‘someone’ or ‘one lucky member’ within this audience is in with a chance to WTA. We specifically never say that "all of the audience" are.”
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