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
Competition No. 2522: Right on You are invited to submit a right-wing protest song (16 lines maximum). Entries to ‘Competition 2522’ by 22 November or email lucy@spectator.co.uk. In Competition 2519 you were invited to submit a short story entitled ‘A Song from under the Floorboards’. There is a track of the same name by the
Competition No. 2521: Tall tale You are invited to submit an anecdote by a dinner-party bore that culminates in the dubious claim: ‘And that is how I came to eat a cucumber sandwich with the King of Norway’. (150 words maximum.) Entries to ‘Competition 2521’ by 15 November or email lucy@spectator.co.uk. In Competition 2518 you
Competition No. 2520: On the road You are invited to submit a poem entitled ‘Meditation on the M25’ (maximum 16 lines). Entries to ‘Competition 2520’ by 8 November or email lucy@spectator.co.uk. In Competition 2517 you were invited to submit a nonsense poem with the first line ‘They went to see in a Sieve, they did…’, the
Who has not stared blankly at a bewildering installation and wondered what the blazes it was all about? Given that ideas are so fundamental to this sort of art, what we clueless punters need is clarification, not obfuscation. Which makes it all the more annoying when critics write in what seems to be a willfully
In Competition 2515 you were invited to supply Ten Commandments for a belief system, real or invented, of your choice. As traditional authority figures and sources of identity crumble round our ears, people (who, when it comes down to it, quite like to be told what to do) are casting around for new rule books.
Twenty years ago when I worked at Our Price Records the thing we shop assistants dreaded most were customers who would march up to the counter and announce that they’d heard this song on the radio by [insert artist’s name] before launching into a toe-curling rendition which we were expected to identify. Today’s Virgin Megastore
In Competition No. 2514 you were invited to recast a fairy tale as a rap. I thought that fairy tales might translate well into the language of rap. After all, violence is a dominant theme in both genres (especially in the Grimms’ original x-rated versions, which featured scenes of murder, mutilation, cannibalism, infanticide and incest