No. 486: The winners Competitors were asked to compose an
octet on one of the following subjects : the birth of a Royal corgi; the Unkindest Cut of All; an appeal supporting Mrs Whitehouse's 'Clean Up TV' campaign.
After a few weeks of marking competitions one begins to suspect the existence of that strange, amorphous creature known as the Average Competition Enterer. The ACE, of course, ranks several points higher than that other and more notorious common denomin- ator, the Man in the Street. By comparison ACES are witty, polished, urbane; but they do, nevertheless, display a disturbing tendency to act in concert. Why everyone barring a few deviants should choose to write about cleaner TV rather than the Government's ex- penditure cuts or Royal corgis remains a mystery. Perhaps the postscript to Robert Allan's clean-up-Tv appeal might explain the phenomenon : `So often in these tantalising exer- cises one has to simulate a feeling or adopt a position for the sake of effect. How satisfying to be able to conform to the rules and at the same time let oneself go!'
However, this week's five-guinea winner. R. Kennard Davis, prefers Kipling to the lobbyists' broadsheet: —But that's all shoved be'ind me, with the palm trees and paw-paws, An' it's back from East of Suez, to the Government's applause !
Said the sergeant 'See the world, mate!' Well, I'm damn well undeceived, An' of all I 'oped and wished for there's a blink in' lot retrieved.
O the blue seas and the coral sands, the shade where we reclined. An' the dark-eyed girls of Burma, wot was more than mortal kind!
O them blinkin' politicians! 'Ow one with fother vied To let us down wot trusted 'em, the rascals doubled-dyed!
Mary Holtby wins three guineas for her more typical entry : Ill fare the folk who greet with loud applause The filth purveyed by pornographic paws! Where channel now with channel nightly vies To rot your reason and corrupt your eyes, Rise up, vile viewers, by your sets reclined— Demand distraction of a purer kind; . Let Art's pretensions leave you undeceived, And England's honour be at last retrieved.
And three guineas to H. A. C. Evans for his court circular: Some time in calm seclusion she reclined, The cynosure supreme of doggy kind; A mother now, she couches on her side Upon a rug in royal purple dyed. Towards the watchful court she lifts her eyes And with her Queen in graciousness she vies: When to her teat her scion sets his paws Througgout the chamber sounds discreet applause.
A large number of competitors identified the source of the rhymes as Gray's 'On a Favourite Cat, Drowned in a Tub of Gold Fishes'; M. E. Woods's entry was the first opened and wins her a guinea.
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