Spectator competition winners: Coleridge’s wedding guest

The call for a response from Coleridge’s Wedding-Guest attracted a bumper entry with lots of clever nods to his ballad of sin and atonement. Some of you were more charitable than others to the gimlet-eyed seadog with verbal diarrhoea. In a hotly contested week, Brian Allgar, Chris O’Carroll, Max Gutmann, Graham King and Mike Morrison came close to glory but were pipped by the winners, below, who take £25 each. Basil Ransome-Davies nabs £30.

Basil Ransome-Davies
My mates and me were larging it,
As pissed as several newts.
Three wedding guests, we was all dressed
In Jasper Conran suits.

This geezer came up — ponged a bit,
Well hairy, bleedin’ old —
With ‘No offence, excuse me, gents,
My tale has to be told.’

His style was not just roundabout;
You wouldn’t call him sane.
His story’d veer from there to here
And halfway back again.

But yeah, one single fact stood out:
His bird caused his despair.
Long story short? The clingy sort.