[Rob Stuart]

I keep coming up with ones that I actually like, unfortunately. Anyone else having the same problem?

There was a great one on 'Not the Nine O'Clock News' once; 'Let us not be like the blind man in a dark room searching for a black cat that isn't there.' I'm also reminded of Clive James' memorable description of Arnold Schwarzenegger as 'a condom full of walnuts' and Charlie Brooker saying that Ann Widdecombe's face looks 'like a haunted cave in Poland'.

[Graham King]

'He was as certain of his handsomeness as some sceptics are adamant that no American has ever landed on the Moon, and with an equally unenlightened assessment of the key points of photographic evidence.'

'Her eyes looked at him across her cocktail as unwelcomingly to his advances as two policemen looking at an arrogant and impatient MP over a gate and denying him entry (with or without a bicycle) and silently formulating a plan to arrange his very public come-uppance if he should insistently persist while becoming snobbily offensive about their relative social standing, allegedly.'

[George Simmers]

[quote=Rob Stuart;288943]I keep coming up with ones that I actually like, unfortunately. Anyone else having the same problem?
Don't worry. Last time I sent in a mixed bundle of the things, and the ones that Lucy paid Spectatorial cash for were not the really cringe-making specimens, but the ones that I privately thought were rather good.

[Adrian Fry]

Eric, like a row of numbers on the blackboard in a maths class which had not been subject to the function of simple addition, was nonplussed.

[Brian Allgar]

Originally Posted by George Simmers

Don't worry. Last time I sent in a mixed bundle of the things, and the ones that Lucy paid Spectatorial cash for were not the really cringe-making specimens, but the ones that I privately thought were rather good.

Actually, although it says 'toe-curlingly bad', both the examples given are rather brilliant, and I suspect that what Lucy is really looking for is 'outrageous'.

[Brian Allgar]

(Here's one that may strike a chord for some, although others may consider it a vicious blow.)

“Free verse”, said the elderly poet, “with its pitiful absence of metre or rhyme, has all the elegance, expressiveness, and technical prowess of a three-legged rhinoceros attempting to dance the tango with an ostrich that has been amputated at both knees.”

[Brian Allgar]

Poor Kevin suffered from both hyperthyroidism and chronic acne, and his face bore a disturbing resemblance to a pair of boiled sheeps’ eyes staring up from a dish of lumpy porridge.

She tucked into her plate of ice-cream with all the gusto of an epicure during the Qing Dynasty scooping the brains out of a live monkey.

I was so tired that I felt as though I’d been knocked on the head, chopped up into small pieces, and rendered down into fat, bone meal and dog food - in a word, knackered.

Whenever she saw an unopened box of chocolates, her face lit up with a glow of eager anticipation reminiscent of Jimmy Savile entering the children’s ward of a large hospital.

His eyes were like two pomegranate seeds - small, red, and gelatinous.

The atmosphere at the dinner-party was decidedly chilly, and my attempts at breaking the ice met with as much success as the Titanic.

[Rob Stuart]

He reassured her that their relationship was still as solid as a Boxing Day stool.

The Christmas pullover from Aunty Mabel was as loud as Brian Blessed being spayed with a shovel during a nuclear war.

Her answer was about as coherent as a set of flat-pack furniture instructions that had been translated from their original Finnish into binary code by a cross-eyed moron writing left- handed with a leaking fountain pen filled with invisible ink.

The mortar shell exploded like a schoolboy’s water-bomb balloon, only with a casing made of red-hot shards of metal instead of brightly coloured rubber and full of fire instead of water.

On the day of the wedding his head felt like it was a burnt drum full of rusty ball bearings being played by a deaf psychopath with a couple of concrete hammers.

The etherised patient lay spread out on the table like an evening.

[Gail White]

Oh wow, I can't compete with this lot. But I did want to mention a favorite simile by Dave Barry: "He gave a short, barking laugh, like a seal having its prostate examined."

[Charlie Southerland]

Charlton remembered his manhood as a flintlock rifle, stiff, hard and long, ready to go off in his cold, dead hands.