Competition 3453 invited you to describe a new, infallible personal regime that promised to make one healthy, rich and irresistible. (Thanks to Frank Upton.) The crop was not vast but was full of inspiring ideas. Sue Pickard and D.A. Prince both attested to the benefits of rhubarb, while Paul Freeman recommended rabid flag-twirling. Joseph Houlihan’s Burn ’Em with Burnham© programme deserves a mention, as does Basil Ransome-Davies’s Planetary Absolutely New Infinite Church. The prizes go to those below.
Only subscribe to my exclusive regime derived from the wisdom of the Victorian sensation novel and you will become wealthy, healthy and (temporarily if frequently) wed. My step-by-step instructions on the concealment, alteration and obfuscation of family wills will make you Master of the nefariously interpolated codicil. Romantic success will be simply achieved by your fortuitously holidaying at one of my recommended Mitteleuropean spa resorts, where nervously excited or tubercular heiresses daily quiver in readiness for a swift nuptial union. To see you stay in peak physical condition throughout your campaign, I will vouchsafe to you precisely that proportion of stiff if false rectitude of bearing and flintiness of temperamental outburst required to guarantee a workout for your musculoskeletal and cardiovascular systems sufficient to leave you more than equal to sequestering successive wives from the delights of the marital bed to the remotest barred cell of a private lunatic asylum.
Adrian Fry
Rise at 5 a.m., not because it’s healthy, but because nobody successful has ever slept through Breakfast News. Consume a breakfast consisting entirely of blueberries, sardines and moral superiority. Walk exactly 10,000 steps daily while listening to podcasts about cryptocurrency hosted by men called Troy. Never sit unless sitting can be monetised. Replace all hobbies with ‘networking’. Drink enough water to make colleagues concerned. Read one Russian novel per month and mention it casually in cafés. Maintain the body fat of a Tour de France cyclist and the confidence of a mediocre hedge-fund manager. Flirt outrageously with your spouse but nowhere else. Spend less time on social media and more time staring thoughtfully out of train windows. Finally, cultivate the expression of someone who knows a secret about olive oil. People will assume you are healthy, rich and irresistible, which, in modern Britain, is practically the same thing.
Oliver Hatt
Welcome to the Samuel Beckett personal regime where Nothing is the solution. Nothing is the answer to everything. Take to it now! – the great Nothing regime. Nothing calms the nagging mind. Nothing soothes the wretched soul. Nothing will make you rich. Take Nothing for breakfast. Nothing all morning. Have more Nothing at lunch. By evening, you’ll feel like Nothing. Watch Nothing on the telly. And all night Nothing will bring you peace of mind.
Nothing makes you smarter and Nothing makes you irresistible to men or attractive to women. Are you troubled by salacious thoughts and consumed by lust? There is Nothing for it. Nothing cures anything and everything. Nothing moderates raging ambition. Nothing assuages disappointment. Nothing demands no will power. Nothing could be easier than Nothing. Nothing is the antidote to all anxiety. Nothing will improve your sense of self-esteem. Just relax. Nothing will happen. Nothing ever does.
The Revd Dr Peter Mullen
The Reform Regime! That’s the name, that’s the game. That heroic figure, the NewYou, will banish all worries, have all the answers to all your own questions, and receive unlimited blessings. Oil and gas will gush and millions flow in as donations. No more climate change. Hilton hospitals. Trains will run on time, but you will have your limo. Miscreants will be found other places to stay where they will be much happier. No more bad apples fouling the crop. You will be blissful in your own country. A country Reformed just for you. No need for diversity. Diversity is perversity. Taxes, what are they? The sun will shine. Drizzle – what was that? Gone, like climate change. Yes – you will smile, ear-to-ear, with your revered leader. Say the word you know you long for. You’ll be irresistible. Tick that box! The future is You, NewYou, Reformed You.
Shirley Curran
99% of personal regimes fail 99.9% of people because they are designed by Narcissus. Not the Septimus Harding. The SH Regime permits you but one agreeable foible – ‘I adore my cello’ would do nicely – and one modest presentational eccentricity – a mild comb-over perhaps, or magenta lipstick for our Septimas. All else is affordable empathy. Your SH starter pack draws upon Great Literature to fine-tune your responses – ‘But they do look like giants, Don Quixote…’; ‘A dark side, Dr Jekyll – you astonish me!’ – and helps personalise your SH Introductory Hook: ‘Me? Bit of a no-hoper, sadly. Such a disappointment to my illustrious forbears/the Dowager/Hungarian cousins. But back to those windmills…’ Full SH WARDEN (Weaponised Aspiration–Redundant Deferential ENgagement) status will strip away all that wearisome ambition and replace it with a warm Mediterranean swell of lunch invitations and undemanding audience participation. Go easy on yourself – the Septimus Harding way.
Nick Syrett
Eat a giant slice of NICE –
Say, Battenberg, its chequer –
Let them roll your senses, twice.
Love their double decker
Filter water through your skin:
Drizzle in the rains
Bank at will with Ono bank
On the eastern plains
Smile and bow and let the breeze
Skin your knees and dance
This is an uncertain age
Leave everything to chance
Inside out and outside up
From the dark to light
Drink from this magic spirit cup
And day will drench your night.
Bill Greenwell
No. 3456: Semiquincentennial
So it is nearly here, 4 July 2026, 250 years since the birth of the United States. It’s only right to see the occasion as a poetical opportunity (16 lines max). Please email entries to competition@spectator.co.uk on 24 June.
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