In Competition No. 2578 you were invited to imagine the speech that Shakespeare, as a boy, might have delivered as he was slaughtering a calf. This challenge was inspired by John Aubrey’s portrait of the young bard in Brief Lives: ‘His father was a butcher, and I have been told heretofore by some of the
In Competition No. 2577 you were invited to supply definitions of five types of anything you chose. As the eagle-eyed among you will have spotted, Jaspistos set an almost identical assignment a few years ago, inspired by Sydney Smith’s six types of handshake. On that occasion, Noel Petty scooped the bonus fiver for his definition
In Competition No. 2576 you were invited to submit New Year’s resolutions of well-known figures past and present. There can be no finer example to the goal-setting constituency than Jaspistos who, in his late forties though not necessarily at New Year, resolved to do three things which he had regarded with particular dread: to attend
In Competition No. 2575 you were invited to submit a carol entitled ‘The Last Noel’. Noel for me generally goes like this: I make a brief, half-hearted stand against the evils of what now passes for Christmas and then succumb, with abandon, to avarice, gluttony and sloth. By the time I’d finished reading the entry,
In Competition No. 2574 you were invited to take a poem, or a fragment of a poem, and anagrammatise it to make a new poem. Some of you were unsure exactly what it was I was after. I was asking you to break down a poem, or part of it, into its constituent letters and
Lucy Vickery presents the latest competition In Competition No. 2573 you were invited to submit the synopsis of a sequel-that-was-never-written to a well-known novel. Sequels to books and films have a poor reputation, the assumption being that, with the odd exception (The Godfather: Part II, for example), they will almost certainly fall short of the
Lucy Vickery presents the latest competition In Competition No. 2572 you were invited to provide a rugby- or football-style song for another sport. After I’d set the assignment, it occurred to me that it runs counter to the spirit of football chants and rugby songs, which seem to arise spontaneously on the terraces and in
In Competition No. 2571 you were invited to submit an extract from the life story of a famous figure from history written in the style of a contemporary misery memoir. The seemingly insatiable appetite for tales of other people’s torment and degradation that keeps ‘mis lit’ at the top of the bestseller lists is as
In Competition No. 2570 you were invited to take any song by the Beatles or by Elvis Presley and rewrite it in the style of the poet of your choice. It’s a long way from Scotty Moore to Middle Scots but that didn’t stop Penelope Mackie, who submitted a fine rendition of ‘All Shook Up’
In Competition No. 2569 you were invited to describe a modern social ill of your choice in the style of Charles Dickens. Ills singled out included bellowing down mobile phones in public, elusive plumbers, and that scourge of the modern age, the potato wedge. Many entries ably demonstrate what George Orwell describes as Dickens’s ‘undisguised
In Competition No. 2568 you were invited to submit, in verse or prose, a profile of the typical Spectator competitor. The picture that emerges is not all together flattering: a monomaniacal oddbod, almost certainly male (even if he uses a female name) and no longer in the first flush of youth, who nurses a simmering
In Competition No. 2567 you were invited to submit a letter of application for a job of your choosing written by a character from a novel or poem who would appear to be a very unpromising candidate. Thank you to Michael Cregan — the idea for this comp is one of his, tweaked by me.
In Competition No. 2566 you were invited to submit a poem in which the initial letters of each line, read down the page, reproduce the first. Many of your entries struck a grimly topical note with key lines such as ‘Greed driven swine’ and ‘Gordon Brown is mad’. Others turned their attention to the natural
In Competition No. 2565 you were invited to submit a poem about the minor irritations of life written in heroic couplets. Things that bring out the misanthropist in me include ‘comedy’ stickers on cars (e.g., ‘my other car’s a Porsche!’), the over-enthusiastic use of exclamation marks and strangers who say ‘cheer up, love; it may
Lucy Vickery presents the latest competition In Competition No. 2564 you were invited to submit a feature looking back at the Olympic Games written in the overblown style of a sportswriter with literary pretensions. High-brow followers of football are nothing new. And these days, as people flit increasingly freely between high and low culture, there is
In Competition No 2563 you were invited to write a poem or a piece of prose whose lines or sentences end with twelve given words in any order. This is my last week minding the Comp Shop while Lucy Vickery has been on maternity leave. It has been a pleasure and a privilege doing business
In Competition No 2562 you were invited to write a soliloquy by someone prone to malapropisms or misquotations, or a dialogue between them. The trouble with this comp, as I realised when the entries started to come in, is that the two categories overlap; a misquotation often is a malapropism. Happily this didn’t put too
In Competition No. 2561 you were invited to continue in verse or prose the statement ‘The gentleman in Whitehall knows better…’ Another exercise in spleen-venting, this attracted a weighty postbag. The quotation is from Douglas Jay’s The Socialist Case written in 1939. In full it reads, ‘In the case of nutrition, just as in the
In Competition No 2560 you were invited to describe a visit to Glyndebourne or Glastonbury in the style of an author of your choice. But first a memo from Doctor Johnson re. his recent Competition 2558 (Harmless drudgery) in which he let through a contribution that confused a ‘roadie’ with a ‘groupie’. To the lady
In Competition No 2559 you were invited to complete a poem starting ‘Come, friendly bombs, and fall on …!’ with the target of your choice. In a huge entry, Gordon Brown and his crew were by far the most popular destination for your WMDs (you may as well pack your bags now, mate). Other favourite