Oh! What a horrible morning!

In Competition No. 2757 you were invited to introduce a note of unwelcome reality into a song from a musical.

Thanks to Brian Allgar for suggesting this corker of a competition, which attracted a large entry. You might have taken as your model ‘Pore Jud is Daid’ from Oklahoma!, which, as Josephine Boyle points out, is not without gritty realism: ‘He looks like he’s asleep, It’s a shame that he won’t keep. But it’s summer and we’re running out of ice.’

Frank Upton, W.J. Webster, Paul Evans and Alexander Faris just missed out on joining the winners, printed below, who are rewarded with £25 each. Alan Millard pockets the bonus fiver.

Let’s skip to the terrible ending,
A very sad place I know,
When you chance to advance then it’s back you go,
When you trip you will slip with a ti-la-so,

Ti-la-so, ti-la-so,
The backward slide is a contra-flow,
Ti-la-so, ti-la-so,
Ti-la-so-fa-me-re-do! It goes like so:

Chorus: Tee, the game I lost at golf,
La, la dolce vita gone,
Sow, the seeds I scattered once,
Farr, the girl who led me on,
Me, the fool who fell for Farr,
Ray, the cad who cuckolded me,
Dough, the sticky mess I’m in
As I sink back down to ti (she-me-he)
Alan Millard