In Competition No. 2541 you were invited to submit a revealing fragment from an index which is all that remains of the autobiography of someone who has privileged access to the great and good. It might have been a member of the royal household or, as in W.J. Webster’s entry, a hairdresser to the rich,
In Competition No. 2540 you were invited to take a historical event and submit a newspaper leader on it in the style of either the Guardian, the Daily Mail or the Sun. There are some richly comic examples of the art of red-top headline writing in John Perry’s and Neil Roberts’s Hold Ye Front Page,
In Competition No. 2538 you were invited to submit an extract from one of the following books: What to Say When You Talk to Yourself; Nuclear War: What’s in it For You; The Joys of Cataloguing. These are all genuine titles taken from the hugely entertaining Bizarre Books by Russell Ash and Brian Lake. I’m
In Competition No. 2537 you were invited to submit a poem entitled ‘The Song of the Chartered Accountant’. You were allowed to substitute an alternative profession. I interpreted the word ‘profession’ loosely and was tempted by Mike Morrison’s personal shopper and touched by Martin Parker’s sexually frustrated retired flea-circus trainer, though they didn’t make the
In Competition No. 2536 you were invited to take an apparently unpromising holiday location, or a superficially unappealing activity holiday, and give it the hard sell in prose or verse form. One of my favourite spots is Dungeness in Kent. A nuclear power station might not be everyone’s cup of tea but its brooding presence
In Competition No. 2535 you were invited to submit a version of a Bible story recast for the atheist/agnostic market. This assignment, inspired by initiatives such as the Manga comic Bible and the Australian Bible Society’s text-message version of the Good Book, takes efforts to improve the accessibility of the Christian message to an absurd
In Competition No. 2534 you were invited to submit an extract from a speech given by the presenter of a Lifetime Achievement award at the Oscars in which the discerning listener can detect that the speaker is not as ‘delighted’ for the recipient as they purport to be. The film industry is clearly a cut-throat
If you are in awe of the wit and skill of those who appear regularly on the Spectator’s weekly competition pages, and are looking for an antidote to doom and gloom, do visit www.lightenup-online.co.uk, a new quarterly online magazine showcasing the best of contemporary light verse. It is edited by Martin Parker, a veteran competitor,
In Competition No. 2533 you were invited to submit an obituary of a well-known fictional character, which gave you the opportunity to try your hand at what is an often underrated art. The only fictional character that I am aware of who has been honoured with an obituary in the real world is Hercule Poirot,
In Competition No. 2532 you were invited to take a recent news item and compress it into 25 words. I am grateful to Eric Smith in the West Indies who suggested the idea and drew my attention to the shadowy figure of Félix Fénéon, art critic and anarchist, among other things. His fait divers, or
A couple of years ago there was a programme on the BBC in which well-known public figures gamely revealed the contents of their school reports. We learnt that Margaret Thatcher was a ray of sunshine in the classroom: ‘Her cheeriness makes her a very pleasant member of her form’. And if David Beckham (‘makes good
In Competition No. 2529 you were invited to submit a poem describing what women are like. It was Wendy Cope’s funny and poignant poem ‘Bloody Men’ that prompted the comp. There was no obligation to mimic her style, though several did. A disturbing if familiar image emerged from some, though by no means all, of
Lucy Vickery presents the winners of Competition No. 2528 In Competition No. 2528 you were invited to submit an extract from an imaginary story in the Famous Five series written in the style of hard-boiled crime fiction. So it’s Blyton meets Hammett; the upper-middle-class crime-busting quintet, whose adventures are played out in a 1950s rural idyll
No. 2530: Show me the child You are invited to submit an extract from the school report of a well-known public figure, past or present (150 words maximum). Entries to ‘Competition 2530’ by 31 January or email lucy@spectator.co.uk. In Competition No. 2527 you were invited to submit an extract from a Christmas round robin sent
In Competition No. 2525 you were invited to submit a poem in which the opening of Philip Larkin’s ‘Annus Mirabilis’ was adapted so that ‘two thousand and seven’ was substituted for ‘nineteen sixty-three’ and ‘sexual intercourse’ replaced by whatever you considered appropriate. Many of your entries had a Larkin-esque bleakness and grim humour. Here’s William
In Competition No. 2524 you were invited to condense a Jane Austen novel into a limerick. You rose admirably to the challenge, and, as befits a competition based on the Austen oeuvre, your entries displayed sparkling wit, pithy observation and, in the main, metrical accuracy. (Although some of you are clearly not members of the
Competition No. 2526: Mixed messages You are invited to submit a newspaper article from the health pages which reveals that something previously thought to be bad for you has been found to boost longevity. Maximum 150 words. Entries to ‘Competition 2526’ by 2 January or email lucy@spectator.co.uk. In Competition No. 2523 you were invited
In Competition 2522 you were asked to submit a right-wing protest song. There are some fine examples of this underexploited genre in Tim Robbins’s mock-documentary film Bob Roberts which features a guitar-playing senatorial candidate who appropriates the language of the Sixties protest movement to peddle his ultra-conservative message. The campaign trail is peppered with numbers
No. 2524: Condensing Jane You are invited to condense a Jane Austen novel into a limerick (maximum three entries each). Entries to ‘Competition 2524’ by 6 December or email lucy@spectator.co.uk. In Competition 2521 you were invited to submit an anecdote by a dinner-party bore that culminates in the dubious claim, ‘And that is how I
In Competition 2520 you were invited to submit a poem entitled ‘Meditation on the M25’. In Competition 2520 you were invited to submit a poem entitled ‘Meditation on the M25’. Betjeman’s portrayal of road rage in ‘Meditation on the A30’ — ‘You’re barmy or plastered, I’ll pass you, you bastard/ I will overtake you, I