[Chris O'Carroll]

For competition 4302, set by Leonora Casement, they wanted “unrecorded last words from a well-known (but deceased) person that would make us rethink the speaker.”

Brian Allgar wins £20 for three entries (plus a £5 book token for one as Sylvia Smith), Bill Greenwell wins £10 for two, and Basil Ransome-Davies and I each get a book token for one. (The Tesco vouchers go to W.J. Webster, who had only one winning entry, but gave the judges “the best laugh of the week.”)

Additionally, Sylvia Fairley is one of the winners in the magazine's photo caption competition.

I hope Brian and Bill and Basil will post their winners here. In the meantime, here's mine:

Alfred Hitchcock -- “Cut!”

[Brian Allgar]

Well, you may only have got a fiver, Chris, but your entry earned you almost £1.67 PER LETTER! Admittedly, only half that if you include punctuation marks.

Here are mine:

Dr Spooner: “I never said those things! It was all a lack of pies!”

Samson: “I don’t like to criticise, but the pillars of your temple seem a bit rickety to me. Look, if I do this ...”

Georges Seurat: “Doctor, the spots before my eyes seem to have got a lot worse.”

and Sylvia's:

Henry James: “I have only this to say: I shall be brief.”

[Chris O'Carroll]

Basil Ransome-Davies wins with this one, which actually does, unlike my Hitchcock, invite us to rethink the speaker:

Ludwig Wittgenstein -- “Oh, well. I expect it’ll all come out in the wash.”

[Sylvia Fairley]

Thanks for letting us know, Chris. I didn't enter this one, but it's nice to have got the booby prize! (Cartoon caption) Can't remember what it was, actually...
Anyway... just had a notice to evacuate the premises at once - flood warning. I think I'll gather up everything of value and stay upstairs...

[Sylvia Fairley]

PS. I especially like Spooner's 'lack of pies'!

[Chris O'Carroll]

And here are Bill Greenwell's two:

e e cummings -- “LET ME LIVE.”

St Francis of Assisi -- “Any larks’ tongues left?”

[Rob Stuart]

Well I'm going to share my non-winning T.S.Eliot, so there.

'This is the way my life ends,
This is the way my life ends,
This is the way my life ends,
Not with a bang but emphysema.'