No. 1325: The winners
Charles Seaton reports: Competitors were invited to provide extracts from The Diary of a Mad , the occupation being of their choice.
Though there was a mad jogger en route from Samarkand to Lhasa via Everest and an understandably large quota of mad hat- ters, the occupations were normal enough and doctors, dentists and chiropodists (fetishists almost to a man) joined a crop of librarians and vicars (including one who prayed to St John Stevas and Notre Dame aux Camelias). The five winners below receive £10 each and the bonus bottle of Champagne Jules Mignon Brut (NV), presented by Christopher Moorsom and Michael Alexander of the Chelsea Wharf Restaurant, Lots Rd, SW10 (351 0861), goes to George Moor for his demented classicist.
avena as 'I held my woody muse on the shores of Diary of a mad Latin master 8th: Flogged Hogg-Twistleton till he expired for rendering meditaris silvestrem musain tenui the Mediterranean.' What if the little brute were the grandson of the Duke of Torquay and a god- son of the Lord Chancellor as the head kept repeating? Maro's injured manes demanded appeasement. 91h: Threw Grantley out of the window for rendering Ma/a ducis avi domum as 'Thou bringest apples to the house of thy grandfather' — but he bounced.
10th: Sent letter to the Times denouncing EEC squandering of funds on Esperanto. 1 1 th: Scalped Lonsdale with the Lewis and Short. Would the Eclogues be more living if we had some goats? 12th: Letters of sympathy from the Torquay family and the Lord Chancellor for bearing Hogg-Twistleton so nobly for so long. He was laid to rest in the chapel to a Britten descant. A wrong ablative on the stone but reading my ex-
pression the mason fled. (George Moor) Diary of a mad Fruiterer My wife said I give her the pip, so I killed her to- day. It says in the book I got, berry her in lime. So I bought a lot of limes. Juice everywhere, and still she has not decomposed. Still. My daughter says I have been crabby, does she suspect. And my boy came to me, and said he had lost his cherry. Cherry! does he know what that means? No he doesn't. I gave him a bagful, and he did not seem contented. Youth of today. They know nothing about squeezing lemons or melting melons. Know no famous songs, viz. Take A Pear Of Sparkling Eyes. They are only after one thing: veg. Veg, veg, veg. My wife was the same, God rot her (I can't seem to), went on and on about cabbages, carrots, daffodils. Listen, my old fruit, I said as 1 bopped her one, stick your veg. And I sell all kinds, Potatoes, Strawberries, Onions. I am Apples round here. Not much I don't know of fruit, even though customers think I am just Bananas.
(Llewellin Berg)
Diary of a mad Competition-Setter . . . Rather a good day. Put all the entries for my Sonnet on Capital Transfer Tax competition into the shredder and wrote five sonnets myself. At- tached names of regular winners to them, award- ed prizes in what I consider order of merit, but drank the bonus bottle myself. Looking forward keenly to their reaction.
My master plan is now formed. I shall run a series of competitions based on each department of the paper to prove that my entrants can do better in 150 words than the present contributors with their almost unlimited space. Am confident this is so, except perhaps for Jeffrey Bernard's column which I would take over, leaving him to run the competitions. Seeing the wisdom and economy of my scheme, Learned Proprietor would, I am sure, make me Editor which would drive present staff mad except for the two who are already.
(J. G. Links) Diary of a mad Megabrat
Saturday: Should know better than to insult my eyes with the garbage these lousy limeys spew out about me, but this morning's papers — they are unbelievable, man! Why did we spill oceans of GI blood when the war started in 1941 to save these Brits? They are the pits!
Sunday: Things only dimly registered at the time begin to fall into place. That super-moron of an umpire had a strongly Slavic bone structure and I distinctly heard one line judge called 'Ivan' and another 'Sonia.' Need I say more?!
Monday: Convinced these perverted commie bastards are out to get me when I set foot on court this afternoon. Called White House to prepare them for full nuclear alert. Explained urgency of situation to some broad on switch- board. She said, 'You cannot be serious.' Jesus Christ! They're even stealing my lines now!
(Martin Fagg) Diary of a mad Chiropodist
She was here again today, here close to me, too close, with that exquisite, tantalising, ravishing little toe. More than ever I had been I was overcome, overwhelmed, overpowered, nay, overobsessed, by an overdemanding desire to possess that tormenting little toe. But how? I had my professional reputation to consider. It would be foolhardy to jeopardise that for the sake of, yes, for the sake of an uncontrollable desire. No chiropodist was ever in such a dilemma. Of course I would not inconvenience her, but 1 would, I must, possess that little toe — my sanity depended upon it. Surgery was out of the ques- tion, not to have a corn cut. But how to snatch, without disturbing her, a little toe? If I cannot solve this awful problem I fear I shall lose my reason, become irrevocably unbalanced.
(Edward Samson)
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