Spectator competition winners: a life in three words

The latest challenge was inspired by Elizabeth Gilbert’s phenomenally successful memoir Eat, Pray, Love. Competitors were invited to choose a well-known figure, past or present, invent a three-verb title they felt would be appropriate for the 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.

Brian Murdoch Order, Sort, Classify: a Memoir of Peter Mark Roget by John Roget

One of my earliest memories is walking with my mama, my mother, my maternal parent in the park when I was five, and I remarked: ‘Look at the birds — they are pretty, attractive, blue.’