In Competition No. 2729 you were invited to recast a well-known nursery rhyme, filtering it through the lens of a recent news story. Josh Ekroy was on fine form: ‘Liam had a little friend/ his suit was white as snow/ and everywhere that Liam went/ his friend was sure to go.’ In a strong entry, honourable mentions also go to Mae Scanlan, Katie Mallett and Noel Petty. The winners get £20 each. The extra fiver is Mike Morrison’s.
Mary, Mary, ordinary
In décolletage,
Thought, ‘Such tedium being medium,
Why not plump for large?’
M, no cynic, called a clinic;
Fired by vanity
She told them straight, ‘I just can’t wait
To be a double-D’
And, for a time, she felt sublime
With her new acquisitions
But one day, piqued, she shrieked, ‘They’ve leaked!’
Imagine her contrition.
Advised by BAAPS (it’s not for chaps)
‘Get rid of them, you must.’
‘What shall I do? I know, I’ll sue’:
Tant pis, the firm went bust.
Mike Morrison
Little Bo Peep was losing some sleep
As Egypt made Hosni redundant.
Though the brave Arab Spring seemed at first a good thing,
Ill prospects lurked all too abundant.
Libya’s Colonel was mad and infernal.
Bo was glad the tide swept him away.
But fear soon beset her things wouldn’t get better
With new gangsters seizing the day.
(Did Iran’s Shah deserve the worst history might serve?
Yes! And Russia’s Czars were a grim shower;
Sometimes revolution looks just the solution,
Till the next ghastly lot comes to power.)
Long tyrannical nights buried all human rights.
Has the day dawned when people can find them?
Or will the new rule be by beasts just as cruel,
Wagging ruthless intentions behind them?
Chris O’Carroll
There was a crooked man and he made a crooked pile
Through semi-crooked hedge funds all run with crooked guile;
He found a crooked lawyer who earned his crooked rate
And they both worked together in a crooked tax-free state.
Like lots of crooked nondoms he’d run a crooked mile
For crooked tax-evasion with many a crooked wile.
He met some crooked bankers who laundered crooked gains
And made much crooked profit for few, though crooked, pains.
His mounting crooked millions were gained in crooked style
And he banked his crooked winnings with a very crooked smile.
Alanna Blake
Hack and The Bill
Spent several mill
To cook up fancy
Headlines.
They gaily read
What the stars and the dead
Were texting, for daily
Deadlines.
The Hack and The Copper
Came a cropper
When others attacked their
Caper.
And the popular view’s
That the News of the Screws
Was never a proper
Paper.
Bill Greenwell
Sing a song of Downton, a story full of holes,
With three and twenty main parts and several smaller roles.
When the war was over the workers ’gan to rise,
And Daisy craved acknowledgement while Bates remained Inside.
M’Lord surveyed the damage, a change was in the air,
M’lady spoke full seldom, she simply simpered there;
Their daughters, made of cardboard, helped all the plots along,
Thank goodness it’ll be a while before it comes back on!
Carolyn Thomas-Coxhead
Rupert had a little phone, he gave it to his hackers,
They took it everywhere they went, you couldn’t call them slackers;
Intrusive and unscrupulous, if not completely crackers,
They thought exploiting grief was just a way of making smackers.
‘That’s it! Enough’s enough!’ cried Rupert’s advertising backers;
Without their cash, his Sunday paper ended at the knacker’s.
Nicholas Holbrook
Sing a song of euros, a continent of debt,
Seventeen-plus nations in a fiscal net.
When the net was tightened the pips began to squeak —
Wasn’t that a toxic dish for poor old George the Greek?
Nick and Ange were laughing at a lunatic like Georgie,
Silvio was absent at a bunga-bunga orgy,
Dave was in a hissy fit, taking home his ball.
Wasn’t there a euro-brouhaha for one and all?
G.M. Davis
NO. 2732: seeking closure
This is a twist on the annual Bulwer-Lytton contest, which asks entrants ‘to compose the opening sentence to the worst of all possible novels’. You are invited to submit a comically appalling final paragraph to such a novel (150 words max). Please email entries, if possible, to lucy@spectator.co.uk by midday on 25 January.
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