Poor relation

In Competition No 2480 you were invited to supply a song beginning, ‘Oh, what have you done to your …?, the blank to be filled by a relative of your choice.

When you’re young, relatives — barring the family, of course — are automatically ridiculous. ‘Oh, Aunt Jemima, look at your Uncle Jim./ He’s in the duckpond learning how to swim./ First he does the breaststroke, then he does the side./ Now he’s under the water, swimming against the tide!’ I used to sing that giggling when I was a lad. Now I’m an ancient Uncle Jim, it’s less of a hoot. The prizewinners, printed below, get £25 each, and the bonus fiver goes to David Wood.

Oh, what have you done to your Uncle Sydney?

It’s years since we dined with the boring old sot:

He’d spots on his liver and only one kidney —

Now what did they call the disease that he got?

Ned said he saw him at Doncaster races —

Seemed sober, he said, though he tended to lurch,

And, of course, he then went and kicked over the traces

As he did when poor Agnes once dragged him to church.