Speccie Cringeworthy by 3rd July
 

I can't remember this one before, but obviously some can.

No. 2805: cringeworthy


It’s time for toe-curlingly bad analogies again (up to eight each). Here are a couple of corkers to inspire you, courtesy of Bill Greenwell and George Simmers, from the last time we set this challenge: ‘She spoke as throatily as if a frog and its family had got into her throat and smoked a few packets of Peter Stuyvesant before growing claws and scratching at the inside of her thorax’ (BG); ‘Her manner became so suddenly grim it was as though she had injected all of Aberdeen directly into a vein’ (GS). Please email entries, wherever possible, to lucy@spectator.co.uk by midday on 3 July.

It was two years ago. Maybe it's a bit soon for a repeat, but these are quite fun to make up.

George, your one sounds a bit like P G Wodehouse. Or son of P G Wodehouse anyway. In other words good not deliberately bad.

Her smile was as sudden and elusive as a cruising flasher on a murky day in Margate.
It was as surprising as Nigel Farage at an Anti-smoking Europhiles' Teetotal Dinner.
The steak was bloody rare like a cheerful exponent of climate-change.
She was as cloying, sweet and wicked as a deep-fried Mars Bar.
He was as ill- favoured and as impossible to ignore as a dog turd in a swimming pool.
Just a whisper small, secret and importunate as a young nun's fart in the confessional.
She gave a laugh as dark and dirty as an old paedo's mackintosh.
She looked as thin and desperate as a vegetarian vampire after a hard night.
The play was as slight, slow and ultimately disappointing as a pensioner's hard-won erection.
My delight was fast, fleeting and futile like a boy's first botched performance in the bike sheds.

You are right. It is pleasantly addictive. But these surely need tarting up a bit. Is that better?

The Mona Lisa's smile is as shockingly sudden and elusive as the Hitchcockian image of a cruising flasher working a crowded pier at four o'clock of a murky afternoon in Margate.

UKIP's success has been as frankly surprising as would be the You Tube image of their blessed leader, gagging, gurning and swaying at an Anti-smoking Liberal Democrats' Teetotal Dinner.

My steak was as bloody rare as a cheerfully optimistic exponent of man-made climate-change.

Lying back, naked and exhausted in my personal jacuzzi, my Parisian mistress seemed to me as cloying, sweet and wicked as a deep-fried Mars Bar.

Peter Lorre looked, satisfyingly and as usual, as starkly ill-favoured and impossible to ignore as a slow-bobbing dog turd in a swimming pool.

Monroe conversed in True Love's whispers, as small, secret and importunate as a young nun's fart lost in the tall, looming shadows of the confessional.

Walter Matthau presents to his admirers a face as crumpled, dark and dirty as an old paedo's brown mackintosh.

Mia Farrow looked, as always, as spectre thin and desperate as a vegetarian vampire after a hard night.

Harold Pinter's whole oeuvre is as slight, slow and ultimately disappointing as a futile, frotting pensioner's hard-won erection.

A poet's delight should be as fast, fleeting and entirely useless as a frantic boy's first botched performance in a dank, dark, cobwebby corner behind the bike sheds.

He punched me harder than a Muhammad Ali vampire who had just drunk a gallon of Joe Louis's blood after receiving a transfusion from Sugar Ray Leonard.


He was stupider than Albert Einstein and Steven Hawking combined are smart.

Careful, gents, or Dan Brown will be nicking some of these.

Geoff had been neglecting his personal hygiene, rather as the literary establishment had been neglecting the later novels of Nottingham based author Stanley Middleton.

The rain on their faces felt as wet as soup.

The music in the pub was as loud as Brian Blessed being spayed with a shovel during a nuclear war.

She emitted a sound somewhere between a laugh and a shriek, as if a cockerel in a wind tunnel was watching Laurel and Hardy with its head while its rear end was being mauled by a fox.

She shimmied into the room like one of those dames in Raymond Chandler, wearing lipstick as lasciviously red as the Pope’s shoes on a mouth that, like a mid-west tornado, looked as if it was ready to engulf anything it encountered.

Brian, that is awesome. There's nothing for it. I shall have to kill you AS WELL.

I keep coming up with ones that I actually like, unfortunately. Anyone else having the same problem?

There was a great one on 'Not the Nine O'Clock News' once; 'Let us not be like the blind man in a dark room searching for a black cat that isn't there.' I'm also reminded of Clive James' memorable description of Arnold Schwarzenegger as 'a condom full of walnuts' and Charlie Brooker saying that Ann Widdecombe's face looks 'like a haunted cave in Poland'.

'He was as certain of his handsomeness as some sceptics are adamant that no American has ever landed on the Moon, and with an equally unenlightened assessment of the key points of photographic evidence.'

'Her eyes looked at him across her cocktail as unwelcomingly to his advances as two policemen looking at an arrogant and impatient MP over a gate and denying him entry (with or without a bicycle) and silently formulating a plan to arrange his very public come-uppance if he should insistently persist while becoming snobbily offensive about their relative social standing, allegedly.'

[quote=Rob Stuart;288943]I keep coming up with ones that I actually like, unfortunately. Anyone else having the same problem?
Don't worry. Last time I sent in a mixed bundle of the things, and the ones that Lucy paid Spectatorial cash for were not the really cringe-making specimens, but the ones that I privately thought were rather good.

Eric, like a row of numbers on the blackboard in a maths class which had not been subject to the function of simple addition, was nonplussed.

Actually, although it says 'toe-curlingly bad', both the examples given are rather brilliant, and I suspect that what Lucy is really looking for is 'outrageous'.

(Here's one that may strike a chord for some, although others may consider it a vicious blow.)

“Free verse”, said the elderly poet, “with its pitiful absence of metre or rhyme, has all the elegance, expressiveness, and technical prowess of a three-legged rhinoceros attempting to dance the tango with an ostrich that has been amputated at both knees.”

Poor Kevin suffered from both hyperthyroidism and chronic acne, and his face bore a disturbing resemblance to a pair of boiled sheeps’ eyes staring up from a dish of lumpy porridge.

She tucked into her plate of ice-cream with all the gusto of an epicure during the Qing Dynasty scooping the brains out of a live monkey.

I was so tired that I felt as though I’d been knocked on the head, chopped up into small pieces, and rendered down into fat, bone meal and dog food - in a word, knackered.

Whenever she saw an unopened box of chocolates, her face lit up with a glow of eager anticipation reminiscent of Jimmy Savile entering the children’s ward of a large hospital.

His eyes were like two pomegranate seeds - small, red, and gelatinous.

The atmosphere at the dinner-party was decidedly chilly, and my attempts at breaking the ice met with as much success as the Titanic.

He reassured her that their relationship was still as solid as a Boxing Day stool.

The Christmas pullover from Aunty Mabel was as loud as Brian Blessed being spayed with a shovel during a nuclear war.

Her answer was about as coherent as a set of flat-pack furniture instructions that had been translated from their original Finnish into binary code by a cross-eyed moron writing left- handed with a leaking fountain pen filled with invisible ink.

The mortar shell exploded like a schoolboy’s water-bomb balloon, only with a casing made of red-hot shards of metal instead of brightly coloured rubber and full of fire instead of water.

On the day of the wedding his head felt like it was a burnt drum full of rusty ball bearings being played by a deaf psychopath with a couple of concrete hammers.

The etherised patient lay spread out on the table like an evening.

Oh wow, I can't compete with this lot. But I did want to mention a favorite simile by Dave Barry: "He gave a short, barking laugh, like a seal having its prostate examined."

Charlton remembered his manhood as a flintlock rifle, stiff, hard and long, ready to go off in his cold, dead hands.