[Roger Slater]

Check out last year's winners. (Brendan finished second). You'll notice that the winning limerick did allude somewhat to sex, but isn't "dirty," and most of the rest are clean as can be. Before you say clean can't be funny in a limerick, consider the #3 winner by Stephen Gold as a refutation:

A mathematician named Fry
Was the shape of a sphere. When asked why,
He replied, “That’s abstruse,
But I roundly educe
My circumference follows from pie.”

And Ann Martin's #4 limerick is also clean and very clever;

Anatomical study will show
That five letters are all you need know:
The ELBOW is placed
Somewhere over the waist,
While the BOWEL is found down BELOW.

Both Stephen and Ann are UK denizens, by the way.

PS--
You don't just have the weekend. You have all day Monday as well, right until midnight (and, I suppose, a few extra hours if you're in UK time).

[Brian Allgar]

Roger, I'm well aware that the slightest suggestion of real life won't get by the Washington Post censors, but I was enjoying myself too much to worry about that. Indeed, I acknowledged at the outset that what I'd come up with was (mainly) smut. But frankly, given the stakes involved, I'm just as happy to appear in the 'Conversational' section as in the 'Puritanical'.

Moreover,

Though words in my hands are like putty,
These limericks drive me quite nutty -
It’s exceedingly hard
For the properest bard
To invent one that doesn’t turn smutty.

[John Whitworth]

There are very few memorable limericks that aren't filthy. The only one I can think of is this one by Robert Conquest.

There once was a Marshal called Lenin
Who did two or three million men in.
That's a lot to have done in,
But where he did one in
The Grand Marshal Stalin did ten in.

Of course if it's simply a matter of the word we can always bowdlerise it.

Since sex up in Heaven's

Do thirteen-year-old boys really read the papers in America? Over here they barely read anything at all unless the text is illustrated

[Jerome Betts]

So is this clean enough?

Towns today smell a little bit sweeter
Than those of the past with a fetor
Due to privies or closets
Full of unflushed deposits
Of that troublesome product, excreta.

Or this?

An artist whose forte was sketching
Any scene that would make a good etching
Said, "I'm saddened to find
In the popular mind
My prints are a prelude to leching."

[John Whitworth]

Well, I don't know, Jerome - you write a limerick about shit and then you ask if it is clean enough. Do I smell some English IRONY here?

[Jerome Betts]

Ironic, moi? It has never entered my soul.

Voters greet you with Boo ! mixed with Yah ! ?
Change your accent, it's too la-di-da.
To avoid the 'posh' label
Use a plain desk or table
And get rid of that damned escritoire.

[Brian Allgar]

Ah, but John, as Roger pointed out, it's all in the words used. If Jerome had used the word 'shit', his entry would certainly be going down the toilet of history. But with luck, many readers will think that "Excreta" means someone who emigrated from Crete.

P.S. I like your first two - keep 'em coming!

[Brian Allgar]

Said Pat Myers, “Now who is this toff
Who fills with ‘excreta ’ his trough?
I’m willing to betcher he
Next writes of lechery ...
Bingo! So all Betts are off.”

[John Whitworth]

And here is my chaste muse.


My poetry's all Esperanto.
Pray listen! I'll give you a canto.
According to some
it's a pain in the bum,
But to me it's as good as a panto.

[Roger Slater]

Originally Posted by Jerome Betts

So is this clean enough?

Towns today smell a little bit sweeter
Than those of the past with a fetor
Due to privies or closets
Full of unflushed deposits
Of that troublesome product, excreta.

Or this?

An artist whose forte was sketching
Any scene that would make a good etching
Said, "I'm saddened to find
In the popular mind
My prints are a prelude to leching."

Two winners for sure!