Belloc-esque cautionary tales for our times

In Competition No. 3180 you were invited to submit a Belloc-esque cautionary tale featuring a high-profile public figure.

Cautionary Tales for Children, published in 1907 and ‘designed for the admonition of children between the ages of eight and fourteen years’, featured such cruel and hideous comeuppances as being eaten, feet upwards, by a lion and being burnt to a crisp. Yours were generally rather less grisly, but props to Chris Ramsey for his pay-off to the sad story of Dom, who ended up whacked like a mole: ‘The moral is: for all their dash,/ All Spads, like spuds, end up as mash.’

No one drew a parallel between weepy Matt Hancock and Belloc’s incurably lachrymose Lord Lundy, destined to be the next prime minister but three, who fell from favour because ‘A hint at harmless little jobs/ Would shake him with convulsive sobs’, though the Secretary of State for Health does appear in the winning line-up.