Lucy Vickery

In Competition No. 2860 you were invited to submit a short ode on the death of a pet in unusual circumstances. I was prompted to set this challenge by Thomas Gray’s charming and witty cautionary tale ‘Ode on the Death of a Favourite Cat, Drowned in a Tub of Gold Fishes’, which he wrote in 1747 in memory of Horace Walpole’s beloved tabby Selima, whose desire leads her to a watery demise. ‘She stretched in vain to reach the prize./ What female heart can gold despise?/ What cat’s averse to fish?’ D.A. Prince’s winning composition below has strong echoes of Gray and there was plenty of wit and charm on display elsewhere in the entry. Commendations to Poppy McLean, John-Paul Marney, Martin Parker and Anita Howard.

In Competition No. 2859 you were invited to submit an offputting party political broadcast by the Tories, Labour, the Lib Dems, the Greens or Ukip. Basil Ransome-Davies wasn’t alone in revealing the ruthlessness that lurks beneath the tree-hugging veneer of the Greens. He gets an honourable mention, as does Adrian Fry, who recruited Jimmy Savile as Tory spokesman: can’t get more repellent than that. The ones that shone brightest in what was a surprisingly small entry appear below and are rewarded with £25 each. Frank Upton takes the bonus fiver. Sustainability— the word on all our lips. A Green government will put YOU at the heart of sustainability!

In Competition No. 2858 you were invited to imagine that a well-known figure from 20th-century history was a secret poet and to submit a recently discovered example of their versifying. Politicians featured prominently in the entry: there were poignant lines from the pens of Edward Heath and Michael Foot, and here is Adrian Fry’s John Prescott, just getting into his stride: ‘Don’t call me unsophisticated, I’ve been to Villanelle,/ I know me assonance from elbow, I’ve a cracking tale to tell...’ The winners earn £25 each and George Simmers takes this week’s bonus fiver.

In Competition No. 2856 you were invited to recruit a well-known author of your choice to give Phil Neville a masterclass in the art of football commentary. After his commentary debut, unkind comparisons were drawn between Neville’s style and a speak-your-weight machine, and when the England physio was stretchered off injured, a Twitter user speculated that it was because he’d ‘slipped into a coma when a live feed of Phil Neville’s commentary was played into his earpiece’. There was lively and stimulating punditry on offer in the entry, serving as a shining example to Mr Neville. Commendations go to Adrian Fry, Hugh King and Nick Booth. The bonus fiver is D.A. Prince’s; the rest take £25 each.

In Competition No. 2854 you were invited to invent a title for a new cookery book, with a fresh angle, and supply a publisher’s blurb. When it comes to the market for bizarre cookery books, a quick trawl of the web reveals that there is already stiff competition out there. The Star Wars Cookbook (may the sauce be with you) and Cooking in the Nude both caught my eye, and those of you who suggested a roadkill-based approach have been beaten to it by Buck Peterson, who published The Original Road Kill Cookbook in the mid-Eighties (yours, on Amazon, for under a fiver). Commendations to D.A. Prince, Tracy Davidson, Sylvia Fairley and Nicholas Stone, who get applause if not cash. The winners, printed below, pocket £30 each. Adrian Fry takes £35.

In Competition No. 2853 you were asked to incorporate the following words (they are real geological terms) into a piece of plausible and entertaining prose so that they acquire a new meaning in the context of your narrative: Corallian, Permian, Lias, Kimmeridge, Oolite, Cornbrash, Ampthill. The inspiration for this comp came from a bit in Robert Macfarlane’s wonderful The Old Ways where he muses on the names of the surface rock formations in the British Isles: ‘It’s tempting to lend them hypothetical definitions. Great Oolite (the honorific of the panjandrum of a non-existent kingdom). Cornbrash (a Midwest American home-baked foodstuff)....’ There was a great deal of wit and ingenuity on show in the entry this week and competition was hot.

In Competition No. 2852 you were invited to step into the shoes of a well-known writer of your choice and submit a poem or piece of prose in praise or defence of something you would not expect them to champion. You were on top form this week. Martin Parker reveals a lighter side of Leonard Cohen with a nice twist on ‘Bird on a Wire’, while Alanna Blake’s Wordsworth has a soft spot for wind farms. Ernest Hemingway comes out for the League Against Cruel Sports and against sobriety. And J. Seery’s Barbara Cartland shows her true Marxist colours (‘There is no phrase in English more sensuous than “dialectical materialism”’). Other stellar performers were John Samson, Josephine Boyle, C.J.

In Competition No. 2851 you were invited to mark Jeremy Paxman’s departure from Newsnight by supplying an extract from an interview with a politician or statesman in which the interviewer doggedly but unsuccessfully attempts to get a straight answer to a straight question. There’s space only to announce that the winners take £30 and W.J. Webster nabs £35 for his entry, which features a slippery Boris Johnson. I. Would you like to replace David Cameron as Prime Minister? B.J. With whom? Good grief, man, there’s no vacancy and I’m no kingmaker. I. Nor a potential rival? B.J. He is my leader and I think of myself as his fidus Achates. I stroll pleasantly in the cool of his shadow. I. But if he were for some reason... B.J.