Lines on the Beeb

In Competition No. 2849 you were invited to submit a poem in praise or dispraise of the BBC. The entry felt a bit flat this week and you seemed to be lacking in any real conviction either way. Roger Theobald’s opening lines pretty much reflected the general mood: ‘To praise or dispraise: well, if that’s the question,/ The record is too mixed to be quite sure.’ An honourable mention goes to Jerome Betts for his pithy four-liner. Basil Ransome-Davies romps home with the extra fiver and the rest pocket £30 each.

I always treasured Auntie. She was such
   a damn good sport.
Thanks to BBC steam wireless I was
   entertained and taught.
She had lofty Reithian standards and she
   never sold them short,
But Auntie isn’t quite herself these days.
   
We had ITMA kicking Hitler with a touch of the
   absurd;
We had talks and foreign music on the high-
   falutin’ Third;
The Home Service kept us civil. Public service
   was the word.