Lucy Vickery

Oh! What a horrible morning!

In Competition No. 2757 you were invited to introduce a note of unwelcome reality into a song from a musical.

Thanks to Brian Allgar for suggesting this corker of a competition, which attracted a large entry. You might have taken as your model ‘Pore Jud is Daid’ from Oklahoma!, which, as Josephine Boyle points out, is not without gritty realism: ‘He looks like he’s asleep, It’s a shame that he won’t keep. But it’s summer and we’re running out of ice.’

Frank Upton, W.J. Webster, Paul Evans and Alexander Faris just missed out on joining the winners, printed below, who are rewarded with £25 each. Alan Millard pockets the bonus fiver.

Let’s skip to the terrible ending,
A very sad place I know,
When you chance to advance then it’s back you go,
When you trip you will slip with a ti-la-so,


Ti-la-so, ti-la-so,
The backward slide is a contra-flow,
Ti-la-so, ti-la-so,
Ti-la-so-fa-me-re-do! It goes like so:


Chorus: Tee, the game I lost at golf,
La, la dolce vita gone,
Sow, the seeds I scattered once,
Farr, the girl who led me on,
Me, the fool who fell for Farr,
Ray, the cad who cuckolded me,
Dough, the sticky mess I’m in
As I sink back down to ti (she-me-he)
Alan Millard







My royal palace has no indoor plumbing.
My bedroom stinks of last night’s chamber pot.
There’s always damp and chilly weather coming
To Camelot.


My people don’t expect to live past thirty.
A few can read and write, but most cannot.
We seldom bathe; we’re mostly sick and dirty
In Camelot.


Our food’s unwholesome and unappetising.
Our grain is rife with insects, rats and rot.
Good wine or worm-free meat would be surprising
For Camelot.


To me there’s simply not
A more depressing thought
Than those I entertain about
Our lives in Camelot.
Chris O’Carroll



I have often walked down this street before,
But I’ve never seen raw sewage round my feet
before,
This incessant rain has blocked every drain,
Such is life on the street where I live.



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