[Chris O'Carroll]

No 4262
Set by J Seery
As it’s the New Statesman’s centenary year, we asked for articles from current columnists on topics from 1913.

This week’s winners
Yes, it’s that time when we name and shame the compers for their sterling efforts over the year. Not much change at the top, although D A Prince is on the up, some are on the way down and M E Ault returns. Welcome also to new faces, Brian Allgar and Frank Osen. The winners get £25 each, with the Tesco vouchers going, in addition, to Michael Leapman.

First Thoughts by Peter Wilby
There is talk that within a few years the central London Underground might be extended to Loughton, the Essex village where I quietly eke out my modest existence. This is patently unfeasible. I suspect that the rumour originates from greedy property developers hoping to lift house prices to the stratospheric three-figure levels attained in Uxbridge and Harrow when the Metropolitan Railway reached there. We yokels are content with the unfashionable horse-drawn omnibus, which I took this week to attend a pre-production reading of Bernard Shaw’s new play, Pygmalion. Although Shaw – one of this journal’s backers – is supposedly a socialist, he displays an irredeemably patronising attitude towards hard-working flower sellers and their families, mocking the accent and vocabulary of those of us living east of Bloomsbury. Even if it finally does get staged, this elitist tract will surely flop.
Michael Leapman

Down and Out by Nicholas Lezard
News has filtered through to the Hovel that the Yanks have come up with a new ciggie called Camel. I’d have said fag but, over there, that’s got another meaning, one I’d better not pursue here. Frankly, I don’t think much of their brand name. I mean, what do camels suggest. All right, I’ll give you humps. But their looks and smell! I remember telling my wife that on an off-day she resembled the south end of a north-bound camel. That’s the day she became the ex. And the smell? That was Razors’ mouth the morning after. I’ll stick to reliable old Woodbines, or rollmy- owns with strong shag, not that I’ve had one of those recently. Hmm, wonder if I can flog these words to that new rag, Statesman something-or-other?
Barry Baldwin

The Fan by Hunter Davies
Footballers today are overpaid and detached from the ordinary fan. Some of you will have read my book of 1888, The Glory Game. Then footballers would travel to the ground with the fans on the omnibus. Now they travel alone in a hansome cab. This was a time when men gave an honest 90 minutes for a desultory wage of two shillings. Now they luxuriate on two shillings and sixpence. Look at today’s moustaches. Not a patch on the walruses of those days. I bet today japes such as towel flicking are banned. The clubs are now money-making operations. Clapham Rovers charge five pennies admission for away fans. Monstrous! One day the honest working fan will be priced out of his Saturday afternoon entertainment.
Mike Berry

Madness of Crowds by Will Self
The Café Anglais, a white temple to Edesia – chic, though tuned to my gastric intolerances – had closed its doors, pooped out permanently. With a heavy heart, I made my way to the Theâtre des Champs Élysées and Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring, to witness a riot; an explosive fart of puerile barbarism among the rowdy Parisian bourgeoisie. Returning to London, I received the news of the poet laureate’s death; our own banjo-Byron will no longer entertain us with his cringe-inducing odes to nature and his sycophantic Tory eulogies. It took four years to find a successor to Tennyson, and they gave us Alfred Austin. En souvenir, I leave you with one of his bollock couplets that will serve as an epitaph: You pass, a mere memento of the mind/ Leaving no lees behind. From which we infer that Austin’s oeuvre, unlike Stravinsky’s, was never the stuff to incite a riot.
Sylvia Fairley

Top 20 2012
The winners are listed in order of the amount they won, with last year’s position in brackets 1) David Silverman (1) 2) Bill Greenwell (2) 3) D A Prince (=11) 4) Adrian Fry (4) =5) Basil Ransome-Davies (5) and Sylvia Fairley (6) 7) G M Davis (16) 8) Chris O’Carroll (=11) =9) Brian Allgar (-) and Barry Baldwin (18) =11) Josh Ekroy (-), Derek Morgan (10) and Ian Birchall (8) 14) Katie Mallett (9) =15) Alanna Blake (=13) and Frank Osen (-) 17) M E Ault (-) 18) John Griffiths-Colby (7) =19) Nicholas Holbrook (-) and Keith Mason (-)