Lucy Vickery

In Competition No. 2953 you were invited to supply a sonnet that has the name of a tree hidden in every line. This fiendish challenge, which was suggested by a reader, drew a large entry — and the following envoi from Alanna Blake: ‘Gor blimey, not the easiest of romps!/ But, Lucy, press on with these teasing comps.’ Fourteen-liners mean room for seven winners this week. High fives to unlucky losers John Priestland, Nicholas Hodgson and Matt Quinn; 20 quid each to those below; Frank McDonald takes the bonus fiver. The Roman gods were wittier than ours; They could appear in shapes that fooled our sense, Bamboozling hapless maidens with their powers And giving those that pined some recompense.

In Competition No. 2952 you were invited to submit nonsense verse of up to 16 lines on the subject of the EU referendum. So, as if you hadn’t had quite enough nonsense for one referendum — on stilts or otherwise — here’s another helping; though hopefully one that will make you smile rather than snarl. The winners pocket £25 apiece and Bill Greenwell snaffles £30. When mithimade is allbijove Beneath a grayling moon Then hoey is the borigove And wethers are in spoon   When dunkum smit is gallowade Between the moggs and rees Ah join the giselous parade That bothams up the crease   How priti are the villiers Out whitting in the dales! How teehee utlier the furze And dahlia the mails!

In Competition No. 2951 you were invited to remove a letter from a well-known book title and submit an extract from the new work. This challenge, prompted by the hash tag #RemoveALetterSpoilABook that’s been doing the rounds on Twitter, saw you at your best. Among many highlights in a large and inventive entry were Robert Schechter’s A Cockwork Orange, which featured Donald Trump’s manhood, and a turn by Ted Hughes in Katie Mallett’s Far from the Madding Crow. Other star performers were Mike Morrison, John Samson, Peter Bear, Toni Hinckley, Frank Upton and J.M. Wilson. Sadly there was room for just the six winners printed below, who take £25 each. Hugh King nets £30.

In Competition No. 2950 you were invited to propose a new and ludicrous piece of legislation along with a justification for it. Although Basil Ransome-Davies makes it into the winning line-up, some might argue that his proposal is far from ludicrous, given that cats are taking over the internet. Another suggestion that struck me as eminently sensible included Carolyn Thomas-Coxhead’s call for a ban on the wearing of protuberant rucksacks in busy places. Chris O’Carroll’s neat meta entry, which demands a ban on ‘journals of news and opinion … sponsoring competitions that award prizes for light verse and frivolous comic prose’, made me smile, and I also commend D.A.

In Competition No. 2949 you were invited to submit a poem about sharing a drink with a famous writer. I suspected this might be a popular comp and so it proved. I was spoilt for choice winner-wise, so heartfelt commiserations to the many who came within a whisker of making the final cut, especially Alan Millard, Martin Parker, Roger Theobald, Chris O’Carroll and Siriol Troup. The entries that survived the painful and protracted cull are printed below and earn their authors £25 each. Bill Greenwell pockets £30.

In Competition No. 2948 you were invited to step into the skin of a species of your choice and provide an account of the experience. In his fascinating, funny book Being a Beast Charles Foster attempted ‘to learn what it is like to shuffle or swoop through a landscape that is mainly olfactory and auditory rather than visual’. As a badger he took up residence in a hole and ate earthworms (they taste of ‘slime and the land’). And as an urban fox he ‘lay in a backyard in Bow, foodless and drinkless, urinating and defecating where I was, waiting for the night and treating as hostile the humans living in terraced houses all round — which wasn’t hard’. It’s a mighty tall order to enter the cognitive and sensory world of a different species.

In Competition No. 2947 you were asked to submit a poem in praise of old age. Old age gets a bad rap. Only the other week, in these pages, Stewart Dakers questioned our obsession with chasing longevity given the decrepitude and indignities of that final furlong. Here was your chance to put the case for the defence. The competition certainly struck a chord, if the size of the postbag — from veterans and newbies alike — is anything to go by. It was a lively and cheering entry, infused with the spirit of the purple-wearing heroine of Jenny Joseph’s poem ‘Warning’ (‘When I am an old woman I shall wear purple…’) and a far cry from Larkin’s ‘Old Fools’.

In Competition No. 2946 you were invited to supply a verse obituary of a well-known person who has died in the past year. There’s certainly no shortage of candidates. Whether more famous people than usual are dying or whether it just seems that way I don’t know, but hardly a day goes by without one of the stars of light entertainment who provided the cultural backdrop to my formative years — Ronnie Corbett, Victoria Wood, Paul Daniels, Anne Kirkbride, Terry Wogan, Cilla Black, Keith Harris — checking into the horizontal Hilton. Alanna Blake and Max Ross were clever and touching on Ronnie Corbett; Chris O’Carroll, Martin Parker, D.A. Prince and Brian Murdoch also deserve honourable mentions.

In Competition No. 2945 you were invited to suggest remarks guaranteed to get rid of a guest who is outstaying his or her welcome. Leading the pack as surefire ways to get lingering guests reaching for their coats were birth videos, Estonian whisky, Stockhausen, didgeridoo recitals and Rolf Harris’s greatest hits. Also popular were suggestions along the lines of Basil Ransome-Davies’s ‘While you’re here, how about a spot of anal sex?’ and Tracy Davidson ‘Fancy a threesome?’, both of which struck me as somewhat risky. If all else fails, there’s always Graham Pirnie’s admirably uncompromising ‘Fuck off you boring old cow/git.’Those printed below are rewarded with £5 apiece.   Can anyone else smell gas?

In Competition No. 2944 you were invited to imagine what characters from Shakespeare’s plays would have made of this year’s fulsome celebrations of the 400th anniversary of his death and supply a verdict on behalf of one of them. How would the Bard himself have reacted to all the fuss, I wonder. In the expert opinion of Professor Gordon McMullan, director of the London Shakespeare Centre at King’s College London, he would have welcomed the publicity but been ‘baffled by the celebration of him as a person because at that time they didn’t have our obsession with biography or the idea that plays are a reflection of the life of a writer’. Here’s what you thought some of Shakespeare’s creations would have made of it all.