Many of us have our own personal history with comping. For some, this may have started only recently: Perhaps a friend's copy of Compers News caught their eye for example, or they saw a run of competitions that they thought they should enter and it sparked a hobby.
Other people will be able to trace their relationship with comping back many years, and have a lot of happy memories associated with it.
These are likely to include all the times you have won, of course, and the particularly exciting prize experiences you may have had. They'll also feature the people you've met through comping, and the fun things you might have done over the years in the pursuit of prizes!
But long-time compers will also have seen many changes during their time that has impacted their comping hobby.
For example, not so many years ago the majority of competition entries would have been via the post box or possibly the telephone. With the way that communication has changed, these options have been joined by others and over the years more and more of us regularly enter competitions through text messaging, emails, online entries and - even more recently – through social media platforms.
It goes without saying that there were no hashtag Twitter competitions up and running back even as recently as 2005 for example - in fact the site had not yet been launched at that stage! - let alone in the 1970s, 80s or 90s!
The internet is also now a big way for compers to contact each other and share their insights - whereas prior to its introduction, this way of chatting wasn't available.
We'd really encourage history and comping fans to read A Winning Century, where Compers News editor Steve Middleton takes a look through the archive and uncovers a fascinating history…
It traces things back to around the time of the launch of the classic comping title Competitor's Journal, which was Britain’s first comping newspaper that went on sale in 1913.
Think about just how long ago this was - to give a little context, it was only thirteen years after the death of famed Victorian era playwright, Oscar Wilde, and some of the year's literary publications were Edgar Rice Burroughs' The Return of Tarzan and Sons and Lovers by D H Lawrence. World War One had not yet started and it was only a year or so since the RMS Titanic had gone down.
The history traces changes in the world of competition-themed publications over the decades, and includes many fascinating facts.
Meanwhile, fantastic pictures within the article show the way that print publications have changed in their visual style over time, and how in particular Competitors’ Journal has evolved into Compers News as we know it today, with its blue masthead, fun headlines and colourful images. Compers News really is proud to be part of the comping’s very first publication’s family tree.
So what are you waiting for? Whether you've only just begun your comping journey or have been entering competitions for years, you'll get a real insight into its past by reading Steve Middleton’s great history of the comping press.
