[Chris O'Carroll]

No 4279
Set by J Seery
Many screenwriters resort to the backstory for inspiration. We asked you to sketch in the early life of a literary or screen figure with a possibly mysterious past (such as the Man With No Name or Robin Hood), taking him or her up to the moment when readers or viewers first encounter them.

This week’s winners
Some very interesting entries. Clearly a lot of hard work and research went into some. Hon menshes to Frederick Robinson and Sid Field. The winners can have £25 each, with the Tesco vouchers going, in addition, to D A Prince.

Lovin’ spoonful
Having for a father a professor who is as mad as a bag of badgers, the young Mary finds it difficult to avoid his eccentricities rubbing off on her. As a teenager, she spends hours in his laboratory bringing cartoon characters to life and trying various substances to help medicine descend more smoothly. His early death – plummeting from a rooftop in London, while carrying only a black umbrella – inspires her to perfect the “parasol-o-copter”, though its commercial success is limited by the variability of wind direction in these islands.
She is also credited with discovering portals to other dimensions in pavement drawings and developing the art of levitation through telling bad jokes. However, a failed love affair with a fake cockney makes her realise she isn’t absolutely perfect in every way and she gives up her pursuit of science to become a nanny.
Peter Goulding

History of violins
Born in 1854, probably on the Austrian-Hungarian border, into a family of travelling entertainers (his mother is a knife-thrower, his father an illusionist), he is named after his grandfather Çerluk Hoomz, a notorious card sharp. From the age of five, he works as a street violinist until his prodigious memory is recognised by his father and he is promoted. Signs are painted: “See the boy wonder and the world’s biggest brain!”
Fluent in ten languages, Çerluk escapes exploitative parental domination; he flees to England in 1871 and anglicises his name to escape detection. He supports himself by writing puzzles for popular magazines. By frequenting public houses in the vicinity of London University, he acquires a “university manner” and a show of semi-logic. Despite being reclusive by nature and averse to sexual encounters, he forms a deep friendship with an illiterate older woman and drug dealer (also from a circus background), whom he trains to act as his housekeeper.
D A Prince

Match made near Heaven
The chief works day and night on his massive project and at last it is finished. He feels he’s earned a day off – and so does his helper, who, after all, has dealt with a lot of the really boring stuff, such as creating mountains. For a brief moment, life is Heaven.
However, as a last-minute afterthought, the chief decides to make one more creature. It is here that the disagreements between the two begin. The helper suggests that he should also create a female of the same species. He does so using a spare rib but then asks: “Why?” “So that they can procreate,” says the helper. “What!” the chief exclaims. “Sex in my garden? That’s dirty. I’m not having that!”
The helper resigns, buys a snakeskin suit and applies for a job with the Apple Marketing Board. In his spare time, he also invents the friction match. You’ve probably heard of it – the “Lucifer”.
Brian Allgar

Witches’ brew
Three girls arrive in Scotland as students, full of youthful optimism, related primarily not to academic pursuits but rather to the hope of catching the dashing Prince Duncan, who is destined to be king of Scotland. They travel up with their friend Hecate (known to some, unkindly, as “Waity Hecate”) in the year 1032, only to find they are some 400 years early for freshers’ week.
Whiling away their time perfecting student pursuits, they make meals from whatever is available (these are the days before pizza deliveries, curries, spag bol and Pot Noodles but they achieve similar results with eye of newt, tongue of dog, and so on). They vandalise the local common, cutting little round holes in the grass. They run along the beach in slow motion. They try to tempt Duncan by wearing see-through dresses but he is unimpressed. As the play opens, they plot revenge.
David Silverman