[John Whitworth]

Competition
Wednesday, 17th February 2010
Lucy Vickery presents the latest competition
In Competition No. 2634 you were invited to submit an obituary of a well-known figure, past or present, as they themselves might have written it.

In a strong field, the entry was split fairly evenly between prose and poetry. Many poets have penned their own epitaph. Malcolm Lowry’s memorable six-liner begins thus: ‘Malcolm Lowry/ Late of the Bowery/ His prose was flowery/ and often glowery...’ Thank you, Gerard Benson, for drawing it to my attention.
On the prose side, Baron Archer of Weston-super-Mare was a predictably popular subject. As befits one not short on self-belief, his obits are object lessons in accentuating the positive. I liked Michael Cregan channelling R.D. Laing tying himself up in epistemological knots; Noel Petty, Janet Kenny, Josephine Boyle and Frank McDonald also stood out. The winners, printed below, get £25 each. The bonus fiver goes to Martin Parker.

My aims were modest; simple verses
To extol the lasting charms
Of Englishness, suburban values,
Clean-limbed girls with suntanned arms,
Of Gothic tracery and Cornwall,
The Church, the linchpin of our nation,
Tradition, prayer, the middle class
And railways and St Pancras Station.

Guilty husband, Oxford failure
Yet, by God’s almighty hand,
Unlikely Laureate of all
That’s best in England’s pleasant land,
I now await my final journey
Home to Him via Metroland.
Martin Parker

Born in Austria, Adolf Hitler moved to Munich in 1913. He served in the Great War, winning the Iron Cross, before entering politics, where he rapidly built a small new party into a dynamic government. When the failure of a decadent democracy threatened social breakdown, he did not hesitate to take strong executive measures. His commitment to a pan-German patriotism was amply confirmed by the Anschlüss of 1938 and the adjustment of frontiers with two beneficiaries of the treaty of Versailles, Czechoslovakia and Poland. In the latter’s case, a border dispute became a pretext by the Comintern and the Jews of Wall Street to destroy Germany’s revived strength. Despite the overwhelming numbers and savage ruthlessness of of his enemies, Herr Hitler led his embattled nation in a resistance that lasted over five years and only ended with his death. But be warned: He will rise to haunt you!
Basil Ransome-Davies

Sir Isaac Pitman, wh hs dd agd 87, wll b rmmbd fr invntn shrthnd. Brn in rrl Dvn, h ws edctd at Etn. Th othr bys blld hm bcs of hs ykl vwl snds. H dcdd thr n thn t invnt a wrtn systm wt hrdly ny vwls. H trd t wrt lk ths at Oxfd bt h ws snt dwn bcs hs prfssrs sd h ws tkn th p. H jnd th Bgd of Gds bt th strct dspln ws nt fr hm. Th sgt wntd hm t mrch in a strt ln bt Isaac prfrrd lns that wr sqgly. H bgn t wrt sqgly lns. H xplnd t th CO tht ths ws ‘shrthand’ Th CO hd a gd sns f hmr n thrtnt t hv hm ‘sht ot f hnd’. H ws dschgd evntly bcs of flt ft, n evn flttr vwls. H ws tcncl advsr fr th flm M Fr Ldy; whn Rx Hrrsn wrts dn Hpbn’s wds. Sdly he dd bfr th invntn f txt.
John Samson

Thomas Frederick Cooper was. Well he must have been, mustn’t he? He went to the doctor, he said, I think I’m dead. And the doctor said, there’s no future in that. He said, What d’you mean? He said, You’ll have to stop carrying on. Where were you born: wasn’t it Caerphilly? He said, no, they dropped me three times. And then you moved to Exeter, right? He said, yes, Exeter Stage Right. And then he was a Desert Rat: like Blackpool, but the beach was bigger. Here’s a little joke. A conjuror tells jokes. The audience says, where’s the magic in that? He says, you’re having a laugh. So he tells another joke, and the audience says, Magic. So he goes to an agent, and he says, Every time I get a trick right, they boo. So the agent says, Don’t do it. You don’t want to die onstage. See?
Bill Greenwell
...
While Donovan’s influence on every part of ‘pop’ music was overwhelming (he taught the Beatles how to play the guitar, instructed the Beach Boys on harmony singing, advised Jimi Hendrix on scarves and hats and ghosted almost all Dylan’s lyrics up until his motorcycle accident), it’s not generally appreciated how much his assistance was sought by the government of the time, Harold Wilson being a frequent visitor to Donovan’s gypsy caravan discreetly parked on Horse Guards Parade. Here, in between the PM’s tearful tales of global conspiracy, Donovan, a Grand Master of Transcendentalism (one of his first pupils being, of course, the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi) would explain, over a cup of steaming yak’s milk, the basic principles of supply-side economics that were to be adopted with such success in the 1980s when, incidentally, it was Donovan’s acute grasp of military strategy that guided Mrs Thatcher to victory in the Falklands...
John Mounsey

Devoid of the vanity that shows itself as false modesty, George Bernard Shaw would not have disavowed a position in the front rank of literary figures from these islands. He had the wit to see the world as it is, the imagination to see how it might be, and the command of language to convey his conclusions with triumphant clarity and vigour. In his plays he set before the audience not a mirror, for he was far from a cruel man, but rather a window where they might occasionally glimpse their reflection yet were also offered a view beyond the confines of unexamined convention. To all users of English he made the priceless gift of an orthographic scheme to eliminate the archaic perversities of the language. A gift, it must be said, as yet unopened.
A widower, he is only survived by his plays, books and pamphlets.
W.J. Webster

[Jayne Osborn]

Bill and Bazza,

Congratulations once more!

[basil ransome-davies]

Thanks, Jayne, but what I enjoyed most was the comic demolition of that talentless tosser Donovan.

Bazza

[Susan McLean]

Congratulations, Martin, Bill, Basil, and Janet!

Susan

[Martin Parker]

"Hawkeye" Susan, Thank you for spotting me among the winners of what I suspect was intended to be a prose competition. It is always good to chalk up a win for verse on such occasions.

[Marion Shore]

Congrats Bill, Bazza, and Janet!

And Martin! The fiver, no less! (don't spend it all in one place)

Y'all done us proud!

[Jayne Osborn]

Martin,

To a fellow 'new kid on the block', many congratulations, too. Ker-ching!

And Bazza,
Yep, talentless tosser was (is?) Donovan: 'First there is a mountain, then there is no mountain, then there is' - make up your bloody mind, mate!

[Martin Parker]

And his voice sounds so drippingly wet -- Donovan's, that is, not Bazza's, I suspect.

[Marion Shore]

Oh no! I love(d) Donovan! His early stuff! Try for the Sun. Colours. Catch the Wind!

[Jayne Osborn]

Bazza,

You've started something - or, rather, John Mounsey did! And as for David Essex...
no, no, I mustn't...not the time or place!

And Marion,
Never mind, my dear, I expect you've grown up now.