Bangin’ Barnie

I really do get off on giving swag to happy and suddenly thrilled people. It makes you feel good all day. Once I even had the chance, courtesy of Motorworld, of handing out a £24,000 fully iced Citroen AX to a competition winner. I stole all of Chris Tarrant’s methods and strung the poor lad on the phone out so much he burst into loud sobs of sheer joy on the phone when it sunk in and when he met me at the Max Power show after that, he acted like I had personally sorted the prize out rather than simply being the bloke who got to give it away.
However, since we started this lovely new magazine here on Talk Audio, it has became clear that we can swag equipment from the perspicacious companies who have got involved and I have really enjoyed the reaction on the Forum.
Rather than running a soppy ‘competition’ asking ‘Is A either A. B or C?’ and getting all the professional prize thieves who subscribe to Competition Thieving Monthly on our case, it was decided to simply give the stuff away to obviously deserving folks (just like I have done from stages at things like Hot Import Nights and so on) and to make it righteous, never to let on that an item is available for swaggage until you tell the person they have been selected to be ‘Swagged’.
I pick someone who joins in on the threads used to discuss each thing that goes up on the front page (recently ameliorated by addition of a news story index to the Navbar main menu buttons by the way – subtle but an additional cool thing, courtesy of our wicked webmaster) who has been positive and seems interested.
The showcase about Clarion was immediately responded to in the very first response post by a geezer named Barnie. He said, ‘Wouldn’t it be cool if this USA-only deck came to the UK?’ So I asked Clarion’s top chaps who got him one on the very special agreement that this was NOT normal or possible for the regular public. A lovely gesture and indicative of how much TA matters to them.
It was not the USA model Barnie pictured but the Far Eastern Market model called HXD2 which has the same FM passband for radio and all the same top audio specs. It took time but after an epiphanic review you can see he has taken delivery of TA’s first ‘State of the Art’ flag-awarded product.

This was one item I really didn’t want to let go of, but a slightly corrupt reviewer is like being slightly dead or only a bit pregnant. So off it went.
Also, a set of seriously high end ovals from JBL ended up being sent off to a lad called Festazetec who was well thrilled, PM’d me on the forum and stuff but chickened out of having his face seen and even though I pleaded for a shot has not sent one in. Muh!
So although I know he was pleased, he has changed things a little. I future, anyone I pick for swaggage will have to send me a picture first to prove they’ll follow through and be part of the story as guess what? What you read here is what makes these lovely people say ‘Hell yes, the publicity is worth the landed cost of the product to me, please have one to give away!’ So no pic, no swag folks. (A thumbs up with kit in the other arm’s grasp and no face will do for the truly timid BTW)
And I want to keep on being able to do this, it’s fun.
The HXD2 is worth a cool grand and Barnie is a happy Welshman.
So mote it be, swag for you (but not for meeee&;.)