Competition: Jobsworths
Lucy Vickery presents this week's competition
In Competition No. 2690 you were invited to invent names to fit jobs.
This assignment was suggested to me by a regular and long-standing competitor-who-wishes-to-remain-nameless, and was also a favourite of the brilliant Mary Ann Madden, who for many years presided over New York magazine’s literary competition.
Several of you fondly remembered Kenneth Tynan’s superlative ‘Charles Louis D’Ince’, bandleader, while Nigel Harding drew my attention to a Radio 4 report some years ago about an American financial planner called Rosie Scenario.
Cyberspace is groaning with websites giving lists of comedy names of this ilk so I was looking for unprecedented levels of wit and ingenuity. Inevitably, there was a fair amount of repetition: step forward and take a bow, Patti O’Dawes, home improvement consultant; Rick O’Shea, sniper; Walter Wall, carpet fitter; Millie Tant, union leader; Claude Baddely, lion tamer; Lars Torders, publican; Joe King, comedian; Toby Ornottoby, Shakespearean actor; Sam O’Nella, bacteriologist; Bill Moore, commercial lawyer; Alf Resko, outside events organiser; Orson Kart, rag-and-bone man.
The winners, below, get £4 per name.
Sir Miles Wheatley: anger-management consultant (and pioneer)
Menzies May-Forte: Chinese porcelain expert (from Edinburgh)
Tania Hyde-Boyes: dominatrix
W.J. Webster
Ewan Hughes-Army: nightclub bouncer
Bruno Moore: retired publican
Daley Terror: urban off-licence owner
Steve Baldock
Ophelia Payne: grief counsellor
Eileen Rightward: Spectator columnist
G.M. Davis
Sonia Conscience: hellfire preacher
Evelyn Tent: satanist priest
Basil Ransome-Davies
Aubrey Welwyn-Thierry: political philosopher
Rudi Juan Linas: stand-up comedian
Xavier Pennis: financial adviser
Adrian Fry
Mr E. Mann: spy
Adolf Innkeeper: aquarium owner
Tom Singleton
Cass Traightem: lecturer, women’s studies
John Samson
Airey Buller: PR executive
Will Fawcett-Inman: colonoscopist
Jess Canterbury-Boothroyd: professional layabout
Reece Peckman: hip-hop singer
Patrick Smith
C. Venison-Dye: travel agent
Virginia Price Evans
Torquil Kewer: Freudian psychoanalyst
George Simmers
Bertha Deblooze: jazz singer
Derek Morgan
Pierre Revue: academic journal editor
J. Seery
Dave Aleutian (Native Alaskan People’s Independence Campaigner)
Ilsa Raglio: Mozart expert
Brian Murdoch
Aldous N. Moore: Utopian
Frank Osen
Helena Handcart: president of the Humanist Association
John Whitworth
Polly Glott: EU translator
Iain Crawford
Amitav Guest: futurologist
Pete Ritchie
Marigold Always: dating agency proprietor
Harriet Elvin
Gordon le Knowles: economist
P.C. Parrish
R. Scleft: builder or car mechanic
Catherine Benson
Gerry Mander: MP
Una McMorran
R, Gymladd: pirate
Grahame Jones
Hugh Geoffrey Knight: outstandingly successful gigolo
Nick Campailla
Cheryl Proffit: Co-op director
Steven Latter
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