Lucy Vickery

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.

In Competition No. 2943 you were invited to submit a review of a well-known work of literature that has been written by a comically inappropriate reviewer. Honourable mentions go to Nicholas Stone and John O’Byrne, who let Donald Trump loose on The Odyssey and Brave New World. Jane Moth and Frank Upton also caught my eye. The winners take £25; the bonus fiver is Bill Greenwell’s.

In Competition No. 2942 you were invited to submit a rhyme incorporating the lines ‘What are little girls made of?’ and ‘What are little boys made of?’ This challenge was a potential minefield, given how high feelings run nowadays when it comes to the thorny issue of gender identity. Still, those brave souls that took the plunge produced a witty and well judged entry. I especially admired Carolyn Thomas-Coxhead’s nifty Tom Lehrer-inspired submission; Nicholas Stone, Martin Parker and George Simmers also shone. The winners earn £25, except W.J. Webster, who nabs £30.   What are little girls made of Is a question that’s better not put: Answer only if you’re not afraid of Finding your mouth full of foot.

In Competition No. 2941 you were invited to supply a short story entitled ‘Diary of a Superfluous Man’. Turgenev’s Tchulkaturin; Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin; Goncharov’s Oblomov: these ‘superfluous men’ are not simply literary types, says the critic David Patterson, but represent a ‘paradigm of a person who has lost a point, a place, a presence in life’. A few submissions contained clear references to 19th-century Russian literature’s hollow men, but there were many echoes elsewhere in the entry of the nihilism, cynicism and fatalism that characterises them. The winners earn £25; D.A. Prince pockets £30.

In Competition No. 2940 you were invited to supply Dr Seuss’s take on the US presidential race. Given his taste for taking down bullies, tyrants and hypocrites, it seems unlikely that Theodor Geisel would have been a fan of the frontrunner for the Republican nomination, who, as might be expected, loomed large in your submissions. It was a tall order to ape Seuss’s imaginative, subversive genius but you produced a lively and varied entry. Commendations to Mae Scanlan, Frank Upton, Brian Allgar and Alan Millard. Those printed below take £25; Chris O’Carroll pockets £30. McTrumpeter trumpets, ‘I’m born to be Prez! I say the things no other candidate sez! I’m richer than God! I’m a TV star, too!

In Competition No. 2939 you were invited to submit a poem about a famous person and an unlikely pet. There’s plenty of inspiration out there in the real world. A photograph from 1969 shows Salvador Dalí emerging from the subway, his rather dejected-looking pet anteater in tow. And then there is Gérard de Nerval, who considered the lobster to be an ideal companion: ‘They are peaceful, serious creatures … and they don’t gobble up your monadic privacy like dogs do.’ He used to take his for a walk round the Paris-Royal in Paris on a lead made of blue silk ribbon. You more than matched these -bonkers pairings.

In Competition No. 2938, to mark the tercentenary of Thomas Gray’s birth, you were invited to submit an ‘Elegy on a Country Churchyard’ written in the metre of his famous and enduringly popular poem. Every-one was a winner this week, but frustratingly we have room for only six. Those printed below take £25. The bonus fiver is Chris O’Carroll’s.   Time was these mossy stones drew reverent throngs As Sundays called the village to this place, But years have hushed our common prayers and songs. We thrive now on a different brand of grace.   Jazz concerts in this yard have we convened, And readings by the poets of the shire, About whose verses this much we have gleaned: Few know of them and fewer still admire.

In Competition No. 2937 you were invited to submit extracts from the diaries of the famous that their writers did not wish the world to see. Josh Ekroy impressed, lifting the lid on F.R. Leavis’s and C.P. Snow’s chummy trysts; Alan Millard wasn’t alone in outing God-botherer Richard Dawkins; and here’s a snippet from Sylvia Fairley’s Wordsworth: Walked around Ullswater in pensive mood, unable to find a suitable rhyme for ‘hills’. My dear sister, as ever, solved my predicament … the muse inspired her, and she has completed the poem already.   It was an enjoyable entry: hats off all round. The winners take £25. The bonus fiver belongs to Basil Ransome-Davies.   Sunday: another away draw yesterday.

In Competition No. 2936 you were invited to propose lyrics for a new British national anthem. Tom Shakespeare recently suggested that now might be a good time to ditch ‘God Save the Queen’ — ‘terrible tune, with banal lyrics’ — and replace it with something that more accurately reflects contemporary Britain. My favourite, in an entry whose tone varied wildly, was Bill Greenwell’s jaunty reimagining of ‘Hit Me with Your Rhythm Stick’ by the late, great Ian Dury, which is refreshingly lacking in jaundice, sentimentality or jingoism. He takes £35. The rest earn £30.