First or last

In Competition No. 3125 you were invited to compose a comically appalling first or final paragraph of the memoir of a well-known figure, living or dead.
 
This was one of those challenges that raises a glass in memory of Edward Bulwer-Lytton, Victorian novelist and patron saint of purple prose. The oft-cited example of his florid style is the opening to the 1830 novel Paul Clifford — ‘It was a dark and stormy night’ — which was used by Charles Schulz as the first line of Snoopy’s novel, and by Brian Murdoch in his winning entry below.
 
You didn’t quite hit the spot this week and the standard was patchy. Some creditable entries were disqualified because they didn’t strike me as plausible beginnings or endings.
 
I enjoyed Frank Upton’s portrait of a young Jeremy Corbyn soaking up the ideological wisdom of Noggin the Nog and The Woodentops; he earns an honourable mention. Other highlights were D.A.