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.