Lucy Vickery

Spectator competition winners: Let’s parler Franglais

Simone Signoret as Thérèse Raquin, 1953. Credit: Everett Collection Inc / Alamy Stock Photo 
issue 23 April 2022

In Competition No. 3245, you were asked to take a passage from a classic of French literature and recast it in Franglais.

This challenge invited you to engage in the parlour game popularised by the late Miles Kington, whose much-loved ‘Let’s Parler Franglais’ columns in Punch were described by Michael Bywater as a ‘macaronic jeu d’esprit’. Chapeau! to Richard Spencer, and £25 each to those printed below.

Laurent a visité la local morgue, à le recherche du les remains de Camille, qu’il a tué only le jour before. Ou-est-il? Dans le section, ‘Submergé’? Ici les stiffs étaient dans un parlous état: visages bursting comme les saucissons anglais; cheekbones visible vers le flesh; some badly frappé, even un peu brulée. Trés unsettling! Aussi, Camille était un skinny-minny, mais les cadavers dans les slabs étaient blubbery, comme les cochons de Tamworth. Laurent avait les jeebies, et pas mistake. C’est comme une high street boucherie.

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