You can get to loads of places in Club World with less than 3 months notice. Just not Bangkok / Singapore / HK / Oz where demand is massive and, ironically, cash fares are cheap. But you are taking a risk trying to get from zero miles to 100,000 miles in 9 months, if only because Tesco only transfer miles over once every three months.

There is one way you can get a pair of pretty-much-free tickets to the US, Carribbean, South Africa, Canada etc in business class in less than six months - BMI Diamond Club and Star Alliance.

Both you and your girlfriend should apply - separately - for the basic, fee free, BMI credit card. (See flybmi.com - it only works if you have no other MBNA-issued credit cards as you will probably be turned down otherwise.) This will get you both 20,000 miles each in BMI's Diamond Club scheme. A few months later, you should each apply for the other BMI credit card with the £60 fee. You should get this without any trouble - if they turn you down, ring them and tell them to split the credit limit on your first BMI card across both cards, this placates them. You will then get another 20,000 BMI miles each - a total of 40,000 each. All this has cost you is the £60 annual fee for the second card.

Now .... with just 37,500 BMI miles each, you can go in BUSINESS CLASS (as long as you are prepared to pay a 'cash contribution' of around £250 + tax per seat) to Canada, Mexico, South America, US, Caribbean, Cuba, anywhere in Africa, India, Maldives, Pakistan etc. Only 30,000 will get you to Dubai. This is for travel with Star Alliance, which usually ends up being Lufthansa. Availability for Star Alliance awards is generally far better than with BA.

How easy is that?!