In Competition No. 2444 you were invited to offer two stanzas in the metre and rhyme-scheme of Byron’s ‘Don Juan’, making fun of one or more of the Labour party’s present embarrassments.
‘Never,’ said Charles Seaton, my predecessor, when he passed on the sacred baton, ‘give them a political subject. They get too hot under the collar to be funny.’ How wrong he was! Congratulations not only on being amusing but also on handling the challenging ottava rima with verve and skill. Moyra Blyth and Ray Kelley deserve better than to be runners-up. The winners, printed below, get £25 each, and the bonus fiver goes to Noel Petty.
For Charles, the warning bells began to chime.
His staff had brought about his very worst case:
Among the prisoners who’d served their time
(Or maybe half) were some of that accurst race
Of foreigners, Napoleons of crime
Who never should have been here in the first place.
They’d promptly vanished, crying ‘Carpe diem!’,
A fact Charles declined to tell the PM.
But Truth, like thieves and murderers, will out,
And so was Charles, as anyone might guess.
Now who, the PM asked, would have the clout
To set to rights this vast, unholy mess?
Someone with balls enough to wield the knout
But oil enough to pacify the press.
He looked along his ranks of bright-eyed men,
And sighed. ‘Dear God! I’m stuck with John again.’
Noel Petty
What thrills may lurk behind an office door
As zips unzip and buttons are undone
While nylon scanties rustle to the floor.
A busy DPM must have his fun,
Or else the job is just a thankless chore.
Besides, what secretary is a nun?
Yet quelle horreur, the thought. I try, and fail,
To banish pictures of a stranded whale.
Then there are scoundrels, less concupiscent,
Whose pulses palpitate to drier beats,
Whose energy and wealth are lent or spent
To buy a ticket to red leather seats.
As at the Sun King’s court, ennoblement
Is hawked to breed the crassest of elites.
New Labour’s where machismo meets the vermin
Who’ll pimp their mothers for a scrap of ermine.
Basil Ransome-Davies
Their numbers were much thinned by this election.
Newspapers thundered, ‘’Twas a heavy blow!’
The issues were just local — no reflection
Of national policies, but we all know
Absence of trust procured this strange defection.
The time had come; the leader had to go.
Gurning and grinning, he appeared on telly.
Alas! he’d lost the fire in his belly.
The wavy locks that once had crowned his brow
Were sadly gone and streaks of dismal grey
Adorned his temples and those blue eyes now
Had lost their lustre, like an April day
When heavy showers conspire to show us how
Good fortune, like the sun, soon slips away.
But no adulterous scandal then reported
Bore the same weight as criminals undeported.
Laura Garratt
Briefed first to speed the use of road and rail,
John left the public less than, well, transported;
And when he spoke, his words would also fail —
No speaker had a syntax more contorted.
Nor did he need much egging on to flail
His arms as if his circuits had been shorted.
But party logic makes this man first choice
To stand in loco as his master’s voice.
A bully and buffoon, maybe, but John
Is John, a faithful pug to yap at sleaze.
How could it be that he should carry on
Some dumb affair, where he’s the boss and she’s
The hired hand, all reputation gone,
His dignity and trousers round his knees,
His office used to cater to his lust,
The object both of laughter and disgust?
W.J. Webster
If the prevailing situation’s cheerless,
No one would think so from the sight of Blair
Grinning like someone eminently peerless,
Smiting each dragon and each grizzly bear
With arguments as wild as they are fearless.
Alas, I fear he smites the empty air
Like one who feels his friends are all behind him.
(They are, with knives, to which his feelings blind him.)
The stream of promises he loves to offer —
‘Abolish death’ and ‘Make our schools a model’ —
The sums he pays from an abundant coffer
Are seen by his MPs as so much twaddle.
They offer ammunition to the scoffer
By harming those they aim to mollycoddle,
While men in offices cry, ‘Hunky-dory!
With all this cash we’ll soon be voting Tory.’
Paul Griffin
The Mail gave us the details of the diary
Of Prescott’s wild philandering with Tracey
With lots of dirty fun and meetings fiery,
All full of sex and public gropes — most racy!
And though his reputation’s in the mire, he
Will keep his job and merely lose the place he
Used for his trysts. There’s no such luck for Jack
Who drew the shorter straw and got the sack!
The other shuffle victim is Charles Clarke,
Who caused a public frenzy of dismay
And, though he knew, kept Tony in the dark
That foreigners, who should be sent away
In massive boatloads, fill each city park
And rape and mug and murder every day.
So now he’ll gently doze on the back benches
While foreign jailbirds slaughter British wenches.
Shirley Curran
No. 2447: Bizarre books
You are invited to supply an imaginary extract (maximum 150 words) from one of these real book titles: The Philosophy of Beards; Five Years’ Hell in a Country Parish; Unmentionable Cuisine. Entries to ‘Competition No. 2447’ by 8 June.
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