[John Whitworth]

Lucy was stern with those of us who were TOO clever this week
Ouch! Only Frank Osen worthily upheld the honour of the Sphere. Good for him!

Here is this week's. Lucy, get back to verses. We like verses. On the other hand why should not this be a verse?

No. 2691 OUCH!
You are invited to submit toe-curlingly bad analogies (up to eight each). To give you an idea of the depths you are aiming for, here is the winner of a magnificent bad analogies contest run by the Washington Post some years ago: ‘His fountain pen was so expensive it looked as if someone had grabbed the pope, turned him upside down and started writing with the tip of his big pointy hat.’ Please email entries, where possible, to lucy@spectator.co.uk by midday on 30 March.

[FOsen]

Alright, I got nuthin, but I'm moving on to history - maybe . . .


His felt pen was so cheap and worn, it looked as if someone had upended Moammar Gadhafi and started writing with his fuzzy little hat.

The last passenger to board the giant ship was Ms. Edith Ryland of Somerset. Her massive stern was then slowly turned toward the assembled onlookers; she gave an earsplitting toot, which was heard throughout the harbour, and slid ponderously from our view. In bulk and grandeur, she resembled nothing so much as a fearsome, primeval leviathan.

It hit her like a bolt of lightning, which, unfortunately, it was.

As the plane descended, he could see the factories hugging the valley like sweat stains in the crease of an overweight wrestler’s spandex shorts - that was where he knew he must go.

The sea was agitated, like a small girl who's discovered her brother got into the chocolates and ate everything that doesn’t contain coconut.

The storm raged, like an old man demanding directions in a library while his wife tries to tell him to put the batteries back in his hearing aid.

Look at me, I’m as helpless as a kitten on a stick.

He was as dull and uninspired as, I don’t know what.

Frank

[Orwn Acra]

these are as easy as

Agatha looked as though God had eaten a cubist composition and vomited it upon her face.

Beaches of St. Tropez sound like one of those alarm clocks with an ocean sound feature.

Colonel Gilbert resembled his reflection in the mirror.

ok not so easy

[Roger Slater]

When he blew his nose it sounded like an elephant who had tripped and impaled himself on his own tusk only to find, as he lay there helpless and bleeding, that a batallion of army ants was marching up inside his trunk.

[John Whitworth]

Ouch

Her breasts were twin tomahawk missiles, armed and ready: I knew if they were homed in on me that all was lost.

Her cleavage was a fissure in a Japanese earthquake. You could lose a whole unpronounceable town down there.

Her dress was a budget by George Osborne. On the top it coruscated, it sparkled and (yes) squeaked oddly. But at bottom, well, there was really nothing to it.

[Philip Quinlan]

Rowan Atkinson was good at these. I particularly liked his:

We've made as much progress as an asthmatic ant with some heavy shopping.

How about:

The whole exercise was as pointless as a shaved hedgehog.

It was as funny as a German slipping on a banana skin and a bystander sneezing at exactly that moment in such a way that it sounded like schadenfreude.

Her eyes were like two golf balls with little black circles painted on them, only not with the little bumps, and smaller, obviously. Oh, and not the yellow ones people use because they are easier to find in the rough, it goes without saying (although I've said it just to be clear).

?

[George Simmers]

I've had a last-minute go with these. Goodness knows if they're what she wants.

She distributed praise with happy generosity, like raindrops on the streets of Warrington.

Her manner became so suddenly grim it was as though she had injected all of Aberdeen directly into a vein.

The cat’s eyes were as malevolent as those of a High churchman who has just caught sight of a woman bishop.

The tarmac was grey, as though someone had inadvertently mixed whitest snow with darkest midnight, and had carelessly unloosed the result upon the unsuspecting roadway.

The Irish pub was so crowded, it was as though the entire attendance at the Pope’s visit had been squeezed into one booze-scented confessional booth.

Her smile was like a Derridean paradox, at once intriguingly obscure yet paradigmatically unconvincing.

The dinner-table conversation was as irritating as a discussion between Michael Winner, Lembit Opik and Jeremy Clarkson on what used once to be a serious current affairs programme.

My shirt was as wet as though it had absorbed an entire ocean polluted by a slick of 24,000 metric tonnes of essence of Fotherington-Thomas.

[Roger Slater]

Darn, I forgot to enter. I'm about as disappointed as a bomb squad technician who just cut the wrong wire.