[John Whitworth]

The Staggers (New Statesman) has a competition for Double Dactyls - deadline November 17th. I just saw it. The subjects must be current celebrities (in the widest sense). If anyone has the Staggers email address then post it up. I will look out for it tomorrow. What is a double dactyl? These are. I did them this evening. Some references are rather arcane if you are not a Brit. 'Pants' is Brit slang for no good at all. The euro is obviously pants.

Piccola-triccola,
Nikolas Sarkozy
Went to the President
High on the booze,

Said to him stuff that was
Incontrovertibly
Bad about Germans and
Worse about Jews.


Niminy-piminy
Milliband Junior
Nobody gives him a
Cat in Hell's chance -

Flibbertigibbet and
Slubberdegullion,
Probably toxic and
Certainly pants.

[Chris O'Carroll]

Here's the competition announcement, complete with the email address, and with magazine's (I think too rigid) definition of the form. They require nonsense words for line 1, and they insist that the one-word line can't fall just anywhere in the poem, but has to be line 6. (Although they seem to be a bit lax about what counts as a double-dactylic word. Respectability?)

No 4203 Set by Leonora Casement -- We’d like you to have a go at one of our favourites: the double dactyl comp. All lines are double dactyls except lines four and eight. Line one is a nonsense word. Line two is a proper name, and line six a single word. Line four rhymes with line eight. The subject must be a current figure. Here’s a previous winner (Wendy Cope, no less) to inspire you:

Higgledy-piggledy,
Ludovic Kennedy
Dresses with care when he
Goes on the box.

Viewing a tie of such
Respectability,
Would you have guessed that he
Doesn’t wear socks?

Verses in by 17 November
comp@newstatesman.co.uk

[Allen Tice]

Originally Posted by John Whitworth

'Pants' is Brit slang for no good at all.

Why, pray tell? What's it all about, Johnny?

[John Whitworth]

Thank you, Chris. There is only one place in Canterbury where the Staggers can be obtained (right wing yokels that we are) and I couldn't spare more than five minutes, being parked upon two yellow lines. The winning Wendyverse appears in her works somewhere. I agree that the word has to go REspectaBILity, but such is the iron will of the metre that it does, it does. It's true about Kennedy's socks.

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 afreement o that - A level French to my O level.

Allen, I don't know why pants means what it does. It may follow naturally from the use of 'Knickers!' as an expletive meaning 'Bother!', which I actually use myself. The pants are obviously underpants rather than trousers. We don't call trousers pants, not nohow. Come on, Ann, you will know this! A learned woman, she!

What foulmouthed Sarko actually said is recounted by Rod Liddle in this week's Speccie. What he may have said about Barak to someone else we can only guess at.

Added later. There is (says a slang dictionary) some schoolboy slang (boarding schoolboy slang perhaps, since your unposh correspondent does not know it) 'a pile of pants' meaning 'smelly and useless'. Only boys at boarding school would collect a pile of pants. We dayschool chaps would have given them to our mothers to wash long before they became a pile. There is also an expression 'to pants someone' meaning to strip them to their underpants, thus humiliating them. A bit of pantsing occurs in John Betjeman's versde autobiography 'Summoned by Bells' though Betj doesn't use the word.

[Jerome Betts]

Agree about Sarkozy pronunciation, John. Can't remember anyone saying SarKOzy actually. .

Fashiony-pashiony,
Catherine Middleton
Viewed the front pages with
Sisterly pain.

"Some other person, more
Uncallypygian,
Should have been chosen to
Carry my train.”

Frankery-pankery,
Nicholas Sarkozy,
Rather short President,
Why such a glare?

Answer - D. Cameron
Undiplomatically
Sticking his nose in the
Euro affair.

Mitery-whitery,
Archbishop Williams
Scratches his head when he
Visits St Paul’s.

There, with the occupants'
Immovability,
He can do little if
Dialogue stalls.

[Ann Drysdale]

Alas, John - I cannot shed light on your pants. I only know that it is so.

However, the dividing ocean and its shibboleths put me in mind of a favourite poem:

Then I said: “O brother-in-law to Mr. Spurgeon’s haberdasher,
Who seasonest also the skins of Canadian owls,
Thou callest trousers ‘pants,’ whereas I call them ‘trousers,’
Therefore thou art in hell-fire, and may the Lord pity thee!”
O God, O Montreal!

[John Whitworth]

I forgot the Higgledy-Piggledy stuff. I will amend.

[FOsen]

Vodey-o-dodey-o
Leo DiCaprio
Plays Edgar Hoover, though
Doesn’t impress.

Those who knew Edgar know,
Coadunatio,
Hoover would never show
Pearls with that dress.

[Ann Drysdale]

Frank! I was really enjoying that cup of tea until you diverted it down my nose! The extra rhymes are like icing on a "Frank Fancy" - brilliant!

[John Whitworth]

Frank, you have just launched a neat amendment to the form, that the nonsense word shall rhyme/chime with the name. I love it.

Can one launch an amendment?