Competition: Going for a song

Lucy Vickery presents this week’s competition

In Competition No. 2679 you were invited to usher in the New Year with a teetotallers’ drinking song. As usual with this sort of challenge, many that read well on the page didn’t lend themselves to being sung aloud. But an impressive entry yielded some rousing and not unpersuasive calls to shun the liquid devil. Their authors of the following earn £25 each while Ray Kelley nabs £30.

In the instructions for Competition 2681 the year should have read 2010. Figures from either 2009 or 2010 will be acceptable.

Charge your pannikin with water,
Toast in springsprung H2O
Staunch Aquarius, transporter
Of the finest drink we know.

Thus we honour, sir and madam,
Of all draughts the very first —
It’s the ale God brewed for Adam
That most satisfies our thirst.

Scorning Scotch, refusing ouzo,
Banning brandy and Bordeaux,
Each and every kind of booze, O!
We teetotally forgo.

Rain, pour down on us who frolic,
Dance and sing to glorify
Nature’s own non-alcoholic
Liquor, essenced in the sky!
Ray Kelley


Fifteen men in the A and E,
Yo ho ho and a bottle of milk,
They’re all sloshed but not so me!
Yo ho ho and a bottle of milk.
Fifteen men on the danger list,
Yo ho ho and a bottle of milk,
Even the party girls are pissed,
Yo ho ho and a bottle of milk.
We held a booze-up, good and true,
Yo ho ho and a bottle of milk,
Now all they do is honk and spew,
Yo ho ho and a bottle of milk.
They’re all squiffy, stewed and full,
Yo ho ho and a bottle of milk,
But, oh, how my TT life is dull,
Woe, woe, woe and a bottle of milk!
Shirley Curran

I am a very merry chap
Who drinks the water from the tap
And gives his thighs a mighty slap
And downs his Adam’s ale.