Lucy Vickery

Spectator competition winners: can I have been drinking with Jeffrey Bernard?

The latest challenge, to submit a poem about sharing a drink with a famous writer, was inspired by the poetry collection that made Wendy Cope’s name. I suspected this might be a popular one and so it proved. I was spoilt for choice winner-wise, so heartfelt commiserations to the many who came within a whisker of making the final cut, especially Alan Millard, Martin Parker, Roger Theobald, Chris O’Carroll and Siriol Troup. The entries that survived the painful and protracted cull are printed below and earn their authors £25 each. Bill Greenwell pockets £30.

Bill Greenwell I’m sitting sipping cider with Bill Bryson, And listening to his monologues take wing: How Iowa, he claims, was full of bison — But, sotto voce, adds ‘And Here’s The Thing’:

He says he knows the facts behind the lingo; He knows his stormy petrels from his fulmars; He knows the calls they rattle out at Bingo — He knows we’re tasting Gaymer’s and not       Bulmer’s.

We’re at the seaside, by a peeling bandstand; He knows the sewage limit.

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