[John Whitworth]

All the usual suspects, Bill and Bazza and Martin Parker with Frank Osen just missing out. I reckon my Andrew Strauss ought to have wonn for reasons of patrioism, but Lucy is but a poor woman and probably doesn't understand cricket. Here's the new one. It obviously wants prose but verse is what it will get from me.


No. 2684 question time
You are invited to take a well-known literary figure and put them into the role of agony aunt/uncle, submitting a problem of your invention and their solution (150 words max.). Please email entries, where possible, to lucy@spectator.co.uk by midday on 2 February.

[John Whitworth]

Dear Auntie Phil

Dear Auntie Phil, I want to know
Why life is such a frost.
It all went wrong so long ago.
Is hope entirely lost?

I often think I never will
Have any kind of fun.
Is that my lot, Dear Auntie Phil,
Is nothing to be done?

Dear Morbid Thoughts, I think perhaps
You ought to leave your shell
And meet a lot of other chaps
And maybe girls as well.

Your lonely lifestyle threatens you
With anti social forces.
Why don’t you go and join a few
Creative Writing Courses?

[Roger Slater]

I had to look up what an agony aunt/uncle is, but the answer was easy enough to come by. But I'm afraid, John, that I don't catch your literary reference, though your poem still sounds like fun. I stayed more obvious and mainstream with my first foray:


"Dear Uncle Hamlet, Here's the thing:
My uncle killed my dad, the king.
The situation grows absurder.
Dad's ghost said, 'Avenge my murder!'
Yet killing uncles doesn't strike me
as something, well, exactly like me.
I'm not the rash, imprudent type.
I'm more the bookish, student type,
theatrical, a bit pedantic."

"For starters, friend, I'd say an antic
disposition buys you time,
but after that, I'm sorry, I'm
confused as well what you should do,
except, to thine own self be true.
Does that help you? Maybe not.
I'm sorry, though. That's all I've got."

[John Whitworth]

Very nice, Roger. As for mine, well how many well known literary persons are called Philip? There's Marlowe but it isn't him.

[Martin Parker]

A first draft from another of the insomniac early-bird flock. It's an ancient joke guarranteed to produce a snigger from all the thousands of school-children who read the Speccie --

I'm stuck here weaving at my loom.
My curse confines me to this room.
And yet I yearn for Lancelot
Who lives downstream in Camelot.

I long to watch him "Tirra-lirra"
In my arms and not a mirror.
Should I go to him or not?
Your advice would help a lot.

Abandon both your web and loom.
No curse should keep you in your room.
So, whether it should strike or not,
Just take the boat to Camelot.

Do not waste another day.
Seize Love's pleasures while you may.
No maiden ever suffered worse
Than stomach pains from any curse.

[basil ransome-davies]

So far it seems to be assumed that a 'well-known literary figure' is a fictional character. To me the phrase suggests a famous author – Milton, Wilde, Tennyson, Beckett, whoever.

[Martin Parker]

On balance I agree with Bazza -- the literary figure should probably be an actual (and easily identifiable) writer rather than a figure from literature. But it seems a close call.

It is clear , though, that my earlier effort must be disqualified since, although the Agony Aunt is Tennyson, the problem in question is clearly one which already belonged to The Lady of Shalott -- and therefore not one of my own invention as the task requires.

Serve me right for having sweated blood without first reading the question carefully! It reminds me of being back at school!

[Jerome Betts]

Hmm, I have a feeling Lucy will not look kindly on verse for this one, but when the intrepid Whitworth leads the way . . .



Dear John Betjeman, I'm single
And the curate here is free
(Hampshire, Wallop-iuxta-Swingle)
But he doesn’t notice me!

Oh so High Church, Romewards-wending,
Are his Sunday sermon flights . . .
Can there be a happy ending?
Yours sincerely, 'Sleepless Nights'.

Dear young lady, is he ‘poping’?
(All the rage, alas, just now.)
If so, things you may be hoping
Simply spell ‘unholy row’.

Read some Pyms, not trendy Trollopes,
Then prepare to cut and run
From the curate, church, and Wallops!
Ever yours, John Betjeman.

[Roger Slater]

"Dear Uncle Oscar, please advise.
I'm hankering to marry,
But should I marry Harriet
or should I marry Harry?"

"When out in High Society,
it's fine to be a phony,
but it's another matter when
the question's matrimony.

"Being earnest is what holds,
for me, the most importance,
so are you more the Horton type
or are you more the Hortense?

"But most of all I need to ask
why you must marry any?
Monogamy and bigamy
both mean one spouse to many."

[John Whitworth]

Jerome, they make a nice pair. Bookends you might say. But it has always struck me that Larkin could have been quite a good agony aunt. Nobody in his right mind would take Betjeman's advice on ANYTHING.