Lucy Vickery

Doing words

issue 17 March 2018

In Competition No. 3039, which was inspired by Elizabeth Gilbert’s phenomenally successful memoir Eat, Pray, Love, you were invited to choose a well-known figure, past or present, invent a three-verb title you felt would be appropriate for their memoir, and provide an extract from it.

Some promising-sounding titles — Sleep, Dream, Fleece by Sigmund Freud, Wait, Hang Around, Kick One’s Heels by HRH Prince Charles, Elise Christie’s Skate, Fall, Cry and Bill Clinton’s Fornicate, Ejaculate, Prevaricate — didn’t quite deliver but commendations all the same to Paul Carpenter, Richard Corcoran, David Silverman and Douglas G. Brown.

Honourable mentions also go to Adrian Fry — whose Drink, Shag, Repeat saw him stepping into the shoes of this magazine’s Low life correspondent Jeremy Clarke — and to John Bird, David Shields and Ann Alexander. The winners, printed below, are rewarded with £30 each.

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