In the good old days before you could wear things on your face that can read your emails, people would exchange stories and songs around campfires. Nowadays people like me just talk endlessly about the football in soulless chain restaurants. My soulless chain restaurant of choice is Nando’s because it somehow always hits the spot, and also because they made fun of exciting young winger Adnan Januzaj when he took a woman there for a date in his trackies. So I thought I’d try and get free chicken from them for the rest of my life.

From: Alex Bower
To: Nando’s Marketing Team
Date: 29/03/2014 10:19
Subject: A terrible tragedy

To whomever it may concern,

I’ll try and keep this short because my mother always told me that brevity was an important skill, a skill that any ex-girlfriend of mine will tell you that I have really nailed.

I’m writing because at a recent function I was promised unlimited free chicken for life by a man who said he was very important at Nando’s. He did have an impressive business card and although I can’t remember his name I’m fairly sure it was Andrew Rayner, Head of Marketing at Nandos. He was really drunk at the time, but I’m reasonably sure there is an old Belgian proverb which goes along the lines of “A thought that is said when drunk has nonetheless been thought.”

Imagine my surprise then, when I strolled into the Goodge street branch, ordered ten whole chickens at a nice, even, medium heat with eight sides of chips and two of macho peas and tried to pay with my name. Let me tell you, when a Nando’s trainee is confronted with a man waving his driving licence around screaming “But I am Alex Bower, THE Alex Bower!”, the first thing they do is call security. In hindsight this is probably a good thing.

It was worse because I had to explain to everyone at work why, instead of ten whole chickens at a nice, even, medium heat with eight sides of chips and two of macho peas, I had five Snickers bars for everyone to share. And my boss did not respond too well to me saying “Well I’d have got ten if you’d only pay me more.”

Now that I’m packing up my stuff for the last time, I kind of need free unlimited chicken for life now more than ever. I’d love to come to some kind of arrangement with you, or the elusive Andrew with his disastrously empty promise. I can certainly offer you some free publicity in return – I have well over 129 followers on Twitter – so I’m confident that a well-placed tweet from me could double the size of your brand overnight.

Thanks and all the best,

Alex

Here’s what they sent back. I felt they were a little condescending about my Twitter presence but otherwise very considerate.