[Jerome Betts]

Thanks, John. I think you've invented a genre. Had a scary moment when I noticed that Lucy stipulates 150 words maximum. This does suggest prose entries are envisaged, but on the other hand I was surprised to find in my case that 16 lines makes only 90 words. (And yours 91 - is there some mathematical law at work?). So, well within the rubric at least. Fun to try, anyway.

[Martin Parker]

Dear Anxious Four Eyes, let me advise.
If you never get sex on account of your specs
just see what you'll get of you try a lorgnette --
provided you've planned to use only one hand !

Stay hot,
Aunt Dot.

[FOsen]

Dear NEURASTHENIC PROCRASTINATOR,

Thank you for your letter to “Ask ST Coleridge”. You cannot conceive of the Eagerness with which I began this Reply. I immediately ordered a new set of writing supplies. Before they arrived, however, I was felled by a bout of Dysautonomia, which kept me abed for some weeks.

The next month but one, I began determinedly imagining various themes for my Reply, and they have never been far from my mind over the ensuing Years.

Nevertheless, it was not until I found myself confined to this farmhouse near Porlock and self-prescribed two grains of anodyne for an indisposition of the Stomach, whereupon I fell into a 3-hour Reverie, that the sought-for Advice came to me, luminous, shimmering, and fully-formed.

In a paroxysm of Resolve, I now seize pen and paper to . . . Alack—here’s a person at the door—back in a tick!

Frank

[John Whitworth]

It is obvious, as some of you have pointed out, and as I said at the outset, that Lucy is expecting prose. However, in these cases verse has sometimes won in the past, particularly if you can make out a case for it e.g. that the agony aunt is a poet, as in my case. I don't do prose for these things. I've never won with a prose entry, unlike, say, Bazza.

Yes, sixteen lines of verse in never as much as 150 words. The limits are set with an eye to how much space they will take up on the page. A lot of long entries means fewer prizes because of the space allotted (two columns)

[Jerome Betts]

Frank, your Coleridge is a COL (chuckle out loud) and has brightened my morning. Hope it does well.

[R. S. Gwynn]

Dear Auntie Kingsley: I like booze
And girls so much it’s hard to choose
Between them, never knowing what’ll
Go better for me, bed or bottle.
In staying home alone at nights
I save on cabfare, fags, and lights,
Tho’ I’ll admit that may be only
To justify my being lonely.
Is one impelled to get out more
If he finds social life a bore?
Should he try answering the phone
If one’s best company’s his own?
I think it would be rather nice
For you to send me sound advice
Even if it’s a bitter pill.
As ever your fond reader, Phil.

[John Whitworth]

Kingsley and Phil have truly joined the ranks of truly popular writers. Even peple who have never read a word of either would know what you're on about, Sam, just as it would be with Byron or Burns or Dickens. Phil is not just a miserable sod, he's THE archetypal miserable sod. And Kingslay's... well we know what Kingsley is.

[Max Goodman]

I must be too tired to read these correctly (or to understand the rules?). Several of the best--and they're very good--seem not to fulfill the contest requirement of Well-known Literary Figures offering advice.

In some, WLFs request advice (in one case apparently answering himself, confusingly employing a phrase associated with another unnamed WLF), or remain silent in response.

[George Simmers]

Dear Uncle DHL. There is a pleasant young lady in accounts, whom I wish to invite to the firm’s Christmas “do”. What should I say to her?

Answer: Say little. There is a look, unflinching, unsparing, direct, that will establish from the first the basis of your relationship – that you will be master, as a man must. It tells her firmly that she can be nothing to you if her feelings are in the mind alone – mere sex-in-the-head; she will know instinctively that you mean to arouse deep longings in her solar plexus, and to explore the core of her physical jungle, the last and deepest recess of organic shame. If she consents, there may perhaps be hope for at least some of the wretched and rotten human race.