No. 497: The winners
Trevor Grove reports: Competitors were in- vited to write the opening paragraph of a lead story on some 'unexposed and wicked' traffic for publication in one of the following papers: The Dancing Times, The Antique Collector, The Muckshif ter and Public Works Digest, Garden News, The British Farmer, Corsetry and Underwear.
'Trafficking in sin' is a phrase too little used by the heavies, who should by now have realised that its merits as a lickerish eye-catch quite outweight its demerits as a vulgarism. Cliché or no, it is a felicitous phrase.
There was no outstanding entry this week, but the first four entries printed below each win three guineas. First, from Corsetry and Underwear's foreign correspondent, John Digby : Trading on worldwide appetite for transvestite scandal, Iron Curtain anti-religionists have been using Red networks to display alleged evi- dence that impersonation orgies flourished monastically since the earliest time of our bra- and-pantie era. C and U's illustrations reveal damaging anomalies; full-cups, for example, for hollow chests of Tibetan lamaseries. . . .
Back home Martin Fagg of The Antique Collector demonstrates that domestic scandal can be just as thrilling as the imported brands: SLAVE LABOUR FARM EXPOSED! Antiquarian circles are aghast at the revelation that thou- sands of *fenceless woodwoym have perished of exhauMon after being forced, on pain of insecticide, to perform crippling feats of drilling and mastication, thereby furthering their in- famous overlords' unscrupulous scheme to manufacture spurious antiques.
For sheer wickedness, however, Garden News and ace crime reporter T. Griffiths are bard to beat—witness this monstrous story : GARDENER CONFESSES! ABOMINABLE CRIME! Gar- dener John Puddle confessed today that after reading Sade he began sending baby lupins by post—unwatered. Tears streaked his gnarled cheeks as he blamed those 'clanged books.' Grim-faced Bill Sowerbutts comments: 'An abominable crime! His tears come too late for hundreds of innocent lupins.'
With drugs constantly making the front pages it is perhaps appropriate that turned-on Charles Lyall of The British Farmer should have the last word and the final three-guinea prize: Mr Albert Prodder of Fiddalwopping accuses Glumpshire farmers of drug-peddling. He main- tains that 'pot' from the county's large potato crop is being extracted by acupuncture-vacuum devices and sold to teenage addicts, the remain- ing 'atoes,' though of negligible food value, being likely to cause chronic hiccups among teetotallers.
Though not without an honourable mention for another Garden News man, Douglas Hawson, on the infamous 'White Beet Traffic': Lincolnshire growers are being well paid to slash beet instead of screwing off tops to prevent bleeding. Wealthy Mongols have discovered a taste for white beet. It is even sent slow boat to China to extend bleeding period and rumour has it Mongols are paying Egypt to keep Suez closed.
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