Competition | 14 November 2009

In Competition No. 2621 you were invited to invent a new magazine combining two existing publications and provide an extract from it.

It was with great reluctance that I disqualified Josh Ekroy’s poignant portrait of an angst-ridden budgerigar. The publications in question had to be real ones, and energetic attempts to track down Existentialist Monthly and Your Budgie came to naught. In a strong field, Frank McDonald and W.J. Webster stood out; while Bill Greenwell’s synthesis of the phenomenally popular Take a Break — which invites readers to sell their stories of ‘love and betrayal, loss and sin’ — and Identity, the BNP house mag, had a pleasing ring of plausibility He and his fellow winners bag £30 each. The bonus fiver is Adrian Fry’s.

Fortean Times and The Economist
Incontrovertible evidence of world economic recovery is at last at hand. We have conflated no fewer than 11 popular growth indices (Fig. 1) and found that they combine to create an image of President Obama giving a thumbs up. City analysts have noted an increased speed of beard growth on the ageless tramp sited outside the Bank of England, a phenomenon last observed during the recovery of 1986. A class of junior school children in Sidcup have simultaneously reached an understanding of Endogenous Growth Theory, according to their teacher, Miss Huxtable. Last Monday, the Chancellor Alistair Darling’s mobile telephone number momentarily mirrored the precise value of Britain’s national debt. Recent predictions of a double dip recession can now be confirmed as mere hiccoughs in the ether, a conclusion channelled in Leeds by psychic dog Muffin from Gordon Brown’s all-knowing sightless eye. Spending by Librans — always credulous — is already increasing.
Adrian Fry

Hansard and TV Choice
Kenneth Barlow (Weatherfield West, Conservative) asked when there would be a recovery in the supply of younger women that he could then implausibly seduce.