Dickens on Dickens

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 to submit a review of one of Charles Dickens’s novels written by a character from another Dickens novel. The most frequently occurring bylines by far were those of Ebenezer Scrooge, Gradgrind, Wilkins Micawber and Alfred Jingle. I couldn’t read the Jingle entries without hearing the voices of Ken and Kenneth, the ‘Suits you, Sir’ tailors from The Fast Show, and I wondered whether their creator Paul Whitehouse was inspired by Dickens’s wandering rascal. 

There was some impressively relentless punning in John O’Byrne entry, which saw Mme Defarge let loose on Oliver Twist. Here’s a taste: ‘I have read this yarn, combed through it.