After trawling through the various entries featuring glorious praise for Idealog, generous bribes and elaborate sob stories, it was Sam Deane’s heartfelt tale of trying to get a hold of a Josh Lancaster piece for five years that stood out.

“I’ve been trying to get my hands on a Lancaster for years. Five years in fact. It’s no secret that starting salaries in advertising creatives are pretty unremarkable, so every year I thought “I’ll wait a year and get one when I get a pay rise,” he said.

“This happened about five times. Every year without question, Josh got better and his paintings became more expensive.

The closest I ever got to owning an original Lancaster was at a charity silent auction. It was my first silent auction experience and I led for most of the night. At the last second, some bastard with deep pockets swooped in and nabbed it for his wife – lucky her.

Here’s my chance to get my hands on a Lancaster. All be it, probably the smallest Lancaster available. But it’s still a chance.”

It’d be rude not to share some of the other top entries we received, so here are some of the other stand-out submissions. (Caution: strong language ahead).

The throw-your-greedy-mate-under the bus tactic:

“Hi, I wanted to buy Rangi’s partner – piece “L” in the series but that fuckin greedy prick Jamie Hitchcock from Assignment hoovered it up before I got the chance. Therefore I am somewhat worthy of Rangitoto.”

The I’m-sick-of-the-kids’-Lego-inbetween-my-toes tale:

“It surrounds me. It’s everywhere in the house. On the bookshelves, under the beds, on the floor. I want to write to Ed Sheeran and say “hey man… I live in a Lego House!”. So what can you do? Try to fight it? Nah. Embrace it. Go for it. Join in. My hubby and I have made dinosaurs, castles for princesses, toilets, cars, monsters, mutants, animals… you name it, we’ve built it with lego. A Josh Lancaster Lego landscape would be perfect for our house. And one day, way in the future, when the kids have left home and have taken all their Lego with them, we’ll look at that landscape and remember the good old days of the lego wounds on our feet.  Plus we might also remember how amazing the blimmin’ stuff is!”

The goodbye-advertising-career sob story:

“I would love to win Josh Lancaster’s Lego landscape. A lifetime ago I was an intern at Colenso and Josh and Jamie were new CDs that mentored me and my art director partner. Although my advertising career burned and crashed, relatively quickly, the lessons I learnt from Josh will live on forever.”

The visual-evidence-bribe:

“Please, one small piece of perfectly formed logo would make it so much easier to deal with this…”