[John Whitworth]

We didn't do particularly well here, but Bill kept us in the frame with a stalwart Hardy, rather wasted on flibberty-gibbet Barrymore.

Lucy Vickery 29 March 2014
In Competition 2840 you were invited to provide an extract from the autobiography of a modern-day celebrity, ghostwritten by a literary great.

Where would Jordan’s literary ambitions have been without the creative input of Rebecca Farnworth? And how many chapters would Wayne Rooney have managed without the guiding genius of Hunter Davies? Behind many a bestselling biography is an invisible man or woman, the unsung hero who has done most of the work but gets virtually none of the credit.

There were some inspired pairings: Charles Dickens and Jamie Oliver; Charlotte Brontë and Susan Boyle; Stephen Fry and Samuel Johnson. Commendations to C.J. Gleed, Noel Petty and Josh Ekroy. The bonus fiver goes to D.A. Prince for her account of the life of Stephen Fry by way of Bleak House. Her fellow winners take £30.


Fry everywhere. Fry in the bookshops where I sit among the greatest intellectuals of all times, conversing and enlarging the stream of enlightened discourse. Fry among the novelists, Fry instructing the poets in the twists and turns of their little craft. Fry on the TV screen, and not a home in the land that I haven’t entered and delighted. Fry in the cinema, gracing every shot and angle, enhancing even the most light-touch cameo roles with my effervescence, my wit, my mot juste. Fry, above all, in the newest, most sparkling techno-gadget, in the smartest phone, the neatest iPad, the whizziest gizmo, giving my imprimatur to the latest e-thing. Fry, ultimately, in the Twitter-sphere, followed by all who need my most immediate life-experience (and isn’t that everyone?), followed by the Great, the Good, the Nearly-Great, the Young, the Old, all shades of Humanity. Fry the uplifter, the sharer who cares: the man modestly before you.
D.A. Prince/Stephen Fry and Dickens

It is a melancholy tenet of those who order our times, that a man, rising to the very firmament of the spectacular, may make an equal descent with importunate rapidity, in such fashion as to make weathered folk to shake their locks, and murmur into the furze beneath them, knowing fortune to be capricious. Had a bystander been present at the birth of Michael Parker, he should have been startled by the intimate precocity of the child, and by his wayward japes, little conscious of the titanic upheavals he might cause. He should have seen the child leap a rough set of steps, in a singular form of hopscotch, asking the very birds, ‘The top, the middle, or the bottom?’ before essaying a flight both fanciful and acrobatic. Such was Barrymore, as he afterwards became, and it is to his earlier days any observer must first, briefly, turn their gaze.
Bill Greenwell/Michael Barrymore and Thomas Hardy

O the Bygmester Ferguson chomping and chewing and thuddering his scotchbonnet stare when I bent the goldenball to the ball of the foot on the day before the Lord’s own day matching of the day for Manqué Chester Delighted against arse Nell or Queen’s parking meters or the wolves of Hampton until one fine day it came unbidden but fergily into my mind to try the Spanish main half a premier league onwards into real unreal or even surreal Madrid (viva la Victoria!) then gleefully to the outreaches of the galaxy non angli sed los angeles with my essexy and early spiced but now unsung wife frolicsome and frockwise plus the beckhamical brood all complexly named (ah, vera cruz!) and what displayment not of footplay but of underwear and endorsements leaving me (celebrated as a listing celebrity) superrichly enabled to sock more soccer to the rude Americanicals in florid dells.
Brian Murdoch/David Beckham and James Joyce

It is a sun-dappled dawn. See. Dover sinks beneath the blue-birding, kittiwaking cliffs, pillow-white and pale as a seagull’s breast. We gather on deck, happy as hornpiping piccolos: captain and cook, cleaners and caterers, cock-crowing crew and me, fresh-faced and eager — my Peter Pan, baby-boy eyes sparkling and sparking, bright as fireworks, lively as lightning — my baton poised ready to beat this cacophony into a choir as sweet as seaside candy floss. Quavering, quaking before me, these shivering timbers croak in chorus like natterjack toads till, wielding my sea-shanty stick, I tirelessly whip them into shape. Listen. Fine-tuned as the wind on the waves, their lilting lyrics, soft as vespers, sail towards Calais, falling like lullabies lapping the shell-fishy shore. Only a soul-saving, cockle-heart, wand-waving maestro like me could conjure, from howling sea dogs, this siren song choir.
Alan Millard/Gareth Malone and Dylan Thomas

When a lad is tired of Manchester, he’s tired of life. Little did I expect to disavow this sentiment, my abnegation impelled by a Scotch man who rose from circumstances yet more humble than mine own to ennoblement procured from a Prime minister himself having entered this world in the town of Edinburgh, a paltroon, a Whig who pretended to be an honest friend of all the People. Swollen with the arrogance of pride, of which I myself have been falsely accused in the popular prints, this mountebank sought first to reduce the emoluments fairly earned by my giving pleasure to the tide of humanity who assemble to invigilate me, then to curtail the frequency of my public appearances, finally altogether to expel me. Thanks to God, the Almighty Goal-Keeper, my enemy fled into exile, superseded by yet another of that Northern tribe, one Moyes, more amenably disposed.
Barry Baldwin/Wayne Rooney and Samuel Johnson

[Adrian Fry]

With all due respect to D A Prince, could we have some sort of moratorium on use of that Bleak House opening?

[John Samson]

Adrian suggests a moratorium on a certain Dickensian opening. I'd suggest an even wider one, for a while at least, in the Speccie comps.

My heart sinks when Lucy asks for entries 'in the style of a well known author'. There are only a few whose style is generally recognisable. I envy, admire and congratulate those contestants who have the gift of parody, but they do seem to have cornered the market, each with his or her own specialism. They seem unbeatable.

[Chris O'Carroll]

Originally Posted by Adrian Fry

With all due respect to D A Prince, could we have some sort of moratorium on use of that Bleak House opening?

If I had never used the phrase "a truth universally acknowledged" in a Jane Austen imitation, I might have a leg to stand on. But as things are, I have to tip my hat to the formidable D.A. Prince and shut TF up.

John may be right about there being a relatively small stock of writers who are generally perceived to have easily parodied/pastiched styles -- Ernest Hemingway, Henry James, Walt Whitman, P.G. Wodehouse, E.E. Cummings, Emily Dickinson, and William McGonagall, among others. But some of us have occasionally done well by casting our nets into less heavily fished waters. If we stay open and flexible and imaginative, we're less limited than we might think.

[John Whitworth]

Do not forget W.S. Gilbert. I won with W.S. Gilbert. And Vladimir Nabokov, though I didn't win with him. Swiz!

[Adrian Fry]

I have the solution. A competition to write a piece in the style of (say) any one of the following: Anthony Trollope, Ayn Rand, Roger McGough, JG Ballard, Ivy Compton Burnett, Peter Tinniswood, Richard Brautigan, Tom Wolfe, Anita Brookner, Cormac McCarthy. All have, I think, highly imitable styles but are seldom seen in the comps.

[Brian Allgar]

Originally Posted by John Whitworth

Do not forget W.S. Gilbert. I won with W.S. Gilbert. And Vladimir Nabokov, though I didn't win with him. Swiz!

And the indispensable Lewis Carroll.

Adrian, with all due respect, I think your suggested competition is one that I would sit out!

[John Whitworth]

Much too highbrow, Adrian. I've never read quite a lot of these.

[Brian Allgar]

Originally Posted by Adrian Fry

With all due respect to D A Prince, could we have some sort of moratorium on use of that Bleak House opening?

Adrian, are you sure that you're not simply narked because her opening sentence could have been written:

"Fry everywhere - except in this week's competition"?

[Chris O'Carroll]

First of all, my apologies, Adrian, if I appeared to be saying "shut up" to anyone but myself. I had been bellyaching about my unsuccessful Wodehouse entry in this comp. That's what I had in mind when I wrote my earlier post.

I wouldn't be much use in the comp you propose, although I might be able to make a credible effort with Rand or Wolfe. Bill Greenwell's book Spoof has lots of off-the-beaten track pieces, including a brilliant passage of Kafka rewritten by Brautigan.