Competition:  Sing a song…

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.