Competition: This be the reverse

In Competition No. 2730 you were invited to supply a refutation in verse of Philip Larkin’s assertion ‘They fuck you up, your mum and dad’.

‘This Be The Verse’ may not be Larkin’s finest poem but it is certainly his best-known and most oft-quoted (he himself wryly commented that he fully expected to hear it recited by a thousand Girl Guides before he died). The challenge generated a large and generally impressive postbag. Commendations to Frank Osen, Adrian Fry, Robert Schechter and John Whitworth.

Star of the show is Alan Millard, who pockets the extra fiver. His fellow winners, printed below, are rewarded with £25 each.

You lying toad! Your love of booze
Together with that verse’s fame
Lets kids, with words we’d never choose,
Dump on us parents all the blame.
 
We tuck them up when dark descends
And buck them up through daylight hours
And, later, tolerate their friends
Whose alien ways are not like ours.