Lucy Vickery

In Competition No. 2884 you were invited to submit a poem in praise or dispraise of beards. The beard has been rehabilitated since the dark days of Mr Twit, Jimmy Hill and The Joy of Sex. It will, as Ekow Eshun points out in his insightful essay ‘Welcome to Beardland-ia’, one day stand as ‘the definitive visual shorthand for the early 21st century, as the moustache is for the Seventies and a pair of mutton chops for Regency England’. A large entry was evenly split between pogonophiles and pogonophobes. Susan de Sola, Debora Garber and Jonathan Taylor stood out. The winners, printed below, net £25. Basil Ransome-Davies takes £30.

In Competition No. 2883 you were invited to cast a well-known writer, living or dead, in the role of agony aunt or uncle and provide a problem of your invention and their solution. Mark Shelton’s Ted Hughes begins his reply to the question ‘how can I be more confident with girls?’ thus: ‘Stoat does not ask. Forefoot poised, he holds the crosshairs on his victim. The wicked waiting eyes glitter like wet berries. He is a cocked crossbow.’ I also liked Nicholas Holbrook’s Machiavelli putting Nick Clegg right on the hazards of power-sharing, and Jane Moth was good too. D.A. Prince takes £30, the rest get £25. Q. Recently my wife has become lazy, lounging in bed all day; I suspect she may be having an affair. What can I do to rebuild our marriage?

In Competition No. 2882 you were invited to submit a blues song written by a well-known politician contemplating the impending general election. The ghosts of Robert Johnson, B.B. King and Big Bill Broonzy stalked the entry, which was smallish but accomplished. Basil Ransome-Davies’s submission was a clever twist on Kris Kristofferson’s ‘Sunday -Mornin’ Comin’ Down’ but as it’s country rather than blues it didn’t make it into the winning line-up. John Whitworth and Richard Mollet earn honourable mentions, Brian Murdoch pockets the bonus fiver and the rest take £35.   Got up this morning, bought me a bacon roll. You know I got up this morning, bought me a bacon roll. But it left me way down in the opinion poll.

In Competition No. 2881 you were invited to do as Carol Ann Duffy has done and provide an amusing poem about a piece of government legislation. The first line of her poem ‘22 Reasons for the Bedroom Tax’, ‘Because the badgers are moving the goalposts’, is, of course, a reference to environment secretary Owen Paterson’s unfortunate attempt to explain the government’s failure to reach cull targets. Adrian Fry was entertaining on the Chancel Repair Bill. Commendations, too, to Mike Morrison, Virginia Price Evans, Max Ross and John Whitworth. Alan Millard takes the bonus fiver. The rest get £25 each.

In Competition No. 2880 you were invited to provide a publicity blurb for the Bible to sell it to a modern audience. Kieran Corcoran presents Jesus as a social media sensation — ‘He used to have 12 followers but now he has TWO -BILLION!’ — and Derek Morgan pitches the Good Book as the go-to self-help manual: ‘Going to a garden party and nothing to wear? Trouble finding accommodation at peak season in a small town in the sticks? A house on a flood plain and weather forecast looks bad?’ Other strong performers in an uneven field were John O’Byrne, Sylvia Fairley and Josh Ekroy. The prizewinners, printed below, earn £30. The bonus fiver belongs to Pamela Dow. ‘His name’s Christ. Jesus Christ.

In Competition No. 2879 you were invited to follow in the footsteps of Hilary Mantel and provide a scene that shows a well-known villain from history or literature in an uncharacteristically kindly light. Mantel has said that she was driven by a ‘powerful curiosity’ rather than by any desire to rehabilitate Cromwell. ‘I do not run a Priory clinic for the dead,’ she wrote, which is a nice way of putting it. You plundered Dickens for baddies in need of a makeover — Fagin made repeated appearances alongside Daniel Quilp and Josiah Bounderby. Judas Iscariot and Dr Crippen were also popular choices. The standard was on the patchy side, but honourable mentions go to Carolyn Thomas-Coxhead, G.M. Davis, Barry Baldwin and Imke Thormählen. D.A.

In Competition No. 2878 you were invited to submit a poem composed of three haikus that looks forward to the year ahead. The traditional Japanese haiku contains 17 syllables in three unrhymed lines of five, seven and five syllables (though these rules are not always observed by western poets). It is neatly summed up here by Stanley J. Sharpless:   This is a haiku. Five syllables, then seven. Then five more. Got it?   The winners take £17 each. Hats off to Max Ross for injecting a sliver of optimism into the almost all-encompassing gloom of the winning line-up. Happy New Year.   Ukip wins more seats. Nation takes to drinking beer And falling asleep.   Britain becomes known As Europe’s sleeping partner. New PM fights back.

In Competition No. 2877 you were invited to submit a Christmas round robin as it might have been written by a well-known fictional character. Most of the entries were bursting with forced jocularity, but Basil Ransome-Davies, with an unusually frank Jeeves, neatly subverts the round-robin tradition of presenting a relentlessly positive face to the world. Meanwhile, John Samson’s Phileas Fogg takes holiday bragging to a whole new level, thereby earning the festive fiver. His fellow winners take £25. Happy Christmas, one and all!   Where have all the days gone? I know where 80 went! But lost count of number of ships, trains and wind-powered sledges(!) I’ve taken this year. Fabulous world tour. All in less than three months. A record? You bet!

In Competition No. 2876 you were invited to submit an example of an ill-advised foray by a poet laureate, past or present, into rap. Andrew Motion’s ‘rap’, written to mark Prince William’s 21st birthday, featured in a Telegraph piece by Charlotte Runcie on the worst poems by great writers and elicited such withering comments on the BBC website as, ‘Is that rap with a silent “c”, then?’ and ‘It’s my Dad saying “hey, cool man!” over and over again.’ Bill Greenwell’s rapping John Betjeman takes the extra fiver this week. Betjeman has form. On his delightful 1974 album Banana Blush he read his poetry against a backdrop of music by Jim Parker.

In Competition No. 2875 you were invited to submit a poem about an unlikely aphrodisiac. Thanks are due to that legend of the comping world Stanley J. Sharpless, whose ‘In Praise of Cocoa — Cupid’s Nightcap’ gave me the idea for this challenge. How confessional your entries were, who can say, but I liked Adrienne Parker’s account of an erotic encounter with a washing machine. The winners take £25 each. The bonus fiver belongs to John Whitworth, who points out that, unlikely as it might seem, we have it on Shakespeare’s authority that the potato is an aphrodisiac.   Casanova loves potato. Chips are what he gives his chick. Though she be as chaste as Plato Sizzling chips will do the trick.