[Jayne Osborn]

This was a toughie, I thought, so many congrats to Bill, Graham, Bazza and Carolyn. (No Hon Menshes this month.)

(Next comp on new thread.)

Jayne

The Oldie Competition
by Tessa Castro

IN COMPETITION NO 166 you were invited to invent examples of remarks along the lines of ‘Without the oil of hypocrisy, the machinery of convention would simply explode.’ This had figured in The Wit and Wisdom of Boris Johnson (compiled by the brilliant Harry Mount, Bloomsbury, £9.99).
All those printed below win £5 per remark, and the neatly phrased bonus prize of a Chambers Biographical Dictionary goes to Bill Webster, whose mots had something of the Johnsonian air.

It hasn’t struck some people that you can’t
share an egg until it’s cooked.

I’m pretty sure The Waste Land would have
got the nod from Homer.

Setting up the euro was the economic
equivalent of putting on your shoes before
your socks.

I like to have someone in my office who can
see the first strawberries and think jam.

Obviously, no one playing in the scrum is
going to end the match in a clean shirt.

My journalistic principle is that if an idea
won’t wash, it needs taking to the cleaner’s.
Bill Webster

Politics is the only game that has been
codified, and where there is no hope of
Hawkeye or an action replay to turn back time.

I have no need for friendship; I can be
stabbed in the lumbar region by all sorts
of people who have names I do not pretend
to recognise.

George’s smile has the still and deadly
charm of a ventriloquist being operated by
his doll.

The crumbs that fall from a rich man’s table
are jolly nutritious, and probably packed
with vitamins.

The continent of Europe is an amalgam
of shambolic autocracies, tribal huntinggrounds,
tiny tax havens, and factitious fiefdoms:
we have all those here, so it’s pointless
bribing the night-watchman to get in.

Scotland is famous for the midge and the
pint of heavy: just the right ingredients for
independence, I would have thought, and
not worth a farewell card from Clintons.
Bill Greenwell

If it is hard to find the culprits, it may be
easier to discredit their victims.

Retirement draws a discreet veil over many
skeletons in cupboards.

A gagging order may be wrong, while not
seen to be wrong. That is the point of it.
Graham King

Being mayor of London is like making love
to a beautiful woman – but not very.

In comparison with the Conservative Party’s
ways of dealing with leaders who have
reached the end of their useful lives, the
assassins of Julius Caesar were merciful.

I am a sociopath, a great believer in my
personal right to do and say whatever I
please at any time and be excused the
consequences – but then again, I am a Tory.
Basil Ransome-Davies

The measures politicians take to avoid mistakes
are usually thorough but never foolproof.

A royal birth is an occasion for the media to
be on their best behaviour, lest the infant cry.

Without the power of Leveson, one would
never have seen the prowess of Wendi Deng.
John O’Byrne

To say one enjoys watching PMQs is to
confess to finding the spectacle of an overstuffed,
adult-sized shiny-faced infant doing
verbal battle with a cartoon cheese-eater a
source of pleasure.

The thought that the nation’s hard-working
poor have been sending expensive gifts
to Prince George of Cambridge reveals
that they have about as much idea of how
to budget for their own families as the
average cuckoo.

The arguments in favour of HS2 carry about
as much weight as the average model seen
teetering on giant platform shoes down a
runway in Milan.

In the event of being stuck on a giant
zipwire many thoughts come to mind,
most of them about as constructive as
embellishing Heathrow airport with a third
and superfluous runway.
Carolyn Thomas-Coxhead