[Susan d.S.]

This form was cooked up by Anthony Hecht and John Hollander in the 1960s. Their book, Jiggery-Pokery: A Compendium of Double Dactyls (NY: 1967) is great fun.

[John Whitworth]

Nimbleby-pimbleby,
Jonathan Dimbleby,
Stiff competition for
David and Dick.

Which takes the biscuit as
Super-egregious,
PVC, BBC,
Talentless prick?



Humpy 'n pumpy 'n
Herman Van Rompoy 'n
Baroness Ashton, by
Golly by Gosh!

Nothing so pleases these
Big euro-cheeses as
Curbing our freedoms and
Spending our dosh.

[Jayne Osborn]

Nah, the name doesn't scan, but it got it off my chest to say what a pile of crap The X Factor is

Crappity-Xfacty,
Amelia Lily,
had second chance when they
kicked Frankie out.

Do you, like me, suffer
irritability?
Can't bloody see what the
fuss is about.

[Jerome Betts]

John, it's actually Van Rompuy (pronounced 'Rompow')

A query (Susan?) - are the quatrains always separated? I took it from the Wendy Cope example in the NS (noted in a sharp-elbowed crush so I may have got it wrong) that DDs could be printed as eight lines without division.

[Jayne Osborn]

Jerome,

In the marvellous NS book "An Owl in a Sack Troubles No Man", every double dactyl (Wendy's is one of five there, with our own George Simmers' brilliant entry* directly beneath) is split into two stanzas. (Wouldn't really be a 'double' if it's just the one passage, would it? )

*
Chungalow-bungalow
Hans Christian Anderson
Told of sweet mermaids who
Grace the sea-bed.

When people pressed him for
Gynaecological
Details, he stammered and
Went very red.

But this challenge is for 'now' people. (Is it permissible to submit more than one entry?)

[John Whitworth]

I think you can enter as many as you want, Jayne. I second your appreciation of the Owl.

Jerome, thank you. I accpt correction. Of course, whatever it says on the man's birth-certificate he's rumpy-pumpy. I mean, just look at him!


Higgledy-piggledy,
Herman van Rumpy-pump,
Poet and Belgian and
Big euro-cheese,

Meaning a bureacrat
Megalomaniac,
Spreading the word like a
Shocking disease.

[Jayne Osborn]

John,

Shouldn't the nonsense word be one of your own, rather than re-using Wendy's, especially as they give that as an example of how to do it?

Here's my second attempt:

Foodily-roodily,
Michel Roux Junior:
Mmm, I could eat him; the
man's such a dish!

One problem: our zero
eligibility
scuppers my chances, but
I can still wish!

[Bill Greenwell]

"I have to insist on NIKolas SARkozy, but I reckon, the name being French, that is a better approximation than Brit sar-KOzy, and I've got my wife's agreement o that - A level French to my O level."

(says he, having sent one on NS) Worse, I think it's NicolAH SarkoZEE ...

[Jayne Osborn]

That's the problem with this challenge:
finding a six-syllable name with the em-phar-sis on the right syll-ar-bles!

[Bill Greenwell]

Not sure if it's in Owl In A Sack, and can't recall the first line, but one old NS entry went something like

Tidderly-todderly
Vladimir Nabokov -
Wait hasn't somebody
Made a mistake?

Out of such errors Vlad-
imir Nabokov did
sesquipedalian
paragraphs make.

(The original rules allowed line 6 OR 7 to be the single word)