[John Whitworth]

The Blurb ompetition was one of those prose efforts I so deprecate because I can' win the or even, as in this case, even enter them. But the Honour of the Sphere was kept up admrably by old lags, Bill Greenwell and Robert Schechter.

The new competition is ANOTHER prose one. Lucy, don't you care about me? However, it looks fun and Spherians will doubtless be knee deep in fivers.

No. 2643: Spiced up
You are invited to submit what might have been just another dull news story from a local newspaper had you not spiced it up with a number of misprints (maximum 150 words). Please email entries, where possible, to lucy@spectator.co.uk by midday on 14 April.

[John Whitworth]

An old verse of mine just to get you in the mood:

Every Word I Write Is True

The Spiderman is an arachnaphobe.
A girl who gets a head will need a hand.
Sir Francis Drake has circumcised the globe
And plays the crumpet in a rubber band.

Sweet Swine of Avon let me hear you sing:
The Queen was pissing over Chelsea Bridge.
Though nothing is so beautiful as pring
She keeps her frozen assets in the fridge.

Once more unto the beach, dear friends, once more.
Let's leave our footprints in the sands of time.
The days that we have seen, the days of yore,
Days of your what? Pants of my pantomime.

The chip off the block has the key to your lock.
When you fall off the sheep you must cling to a boy
So it's early to bed now and up with the cock,
Every penis is programmed to scorch and destroy.

[basil ransome-davies]

I'm surprised you don't enter prose comps, John. I'm really a prose writer but I don't mind doing a spot of verse if there's money in it.

Ah – I've got it. You're rich!

[basil ransome-davies]

A hugely enjoyable wordplay/nonsense poem there. Could Crabtree be one of your influences?

[John Whitworth]

Bazza I feel my edge is my ability to rhyme. Without it I am left in the dust of many a competitor. However - it matters not who won or lost. But how he played the game. I ought to give this one a whirl. Years ago I wrote a short novel forr children which would probably have been published if my agent hadn't died. Most unprofessional of her. It wasn't as good as my poems though and I didn't really like it much.

[Jim Hayes]

Spiced Up

At the District Court the witless stated she was a virtue at the time of the assault which took place in her reclining years and filled her with foetal despair.

The defendant defied the change saying he had only called to her horse to reclaim
his copy of Greenbeans, The Elizabethan Lemonade, which she had borrowed leading to a long standing fugue between them and claimed she was only trying to saddle an old sore. The persecutor objected to the judge. This led to a country tom which colluded with the judge banging his navel on the wench.

The judy retired to retch a verdict and retuned finding the accursed guilty but inane. 'Thank you' said the old sphincter to the foreskin of the judy. Undressing the Court the defendant said that in the anus of judy's prurience this be the verse.

[John Whitworth]

Jim, youlead the field. It is at present only a field of one, but I think you may set the pace for some time. Good stuff eh?

[Roger Slater]

Good one, Jim. My first crack perhaps goes beyond "misprints," but I'll post it to see if people think it fits the bill:

Refiring after dirty beers of medicated service, the tire chef smoked up at a dinner given in his sauna as the mare resented him with the kiss to the city and a bold crotch. Byronically, as the tire compartment gave the chef a landing sensation, the ghost office down the block was cease by a condensation that turned it to the round, reducing it to suit and cash, and, importunately, billing two coastal jerks who were lurking wait shorting the evening male.

[John Whitworth]

James Joyce rides again, I'd say, and it has the tremendous advantage over Joyce of being short. If only JJ had had Speccie competitions to keep him to the point. By the way, how many of you know the one about Graham Greene wining a comp with a parody of his own work? I believe it's true. Imagine NOT winning with a parody of your own work.

Great stuff, anyway.

[basil ransome-davies]

misprints, not malapropisms