No. 1322: The winners

„ck Jaspistos reports: Competitors were as the for a plausible piece of prose containing 'hi following words: dromedary, divers, dog-leg, doodad, dicky, dyslexically, qualified, decuple, doppelganger, dau°' dewy-eyed. Several of you, untrue to form, behav de dyslexically, misreading, for instal/cc; `decuple' as 'clecouple', 'dado' as 'd°c1,°(a and 'doodad' (a thingummy) as `doodah4e tizzy) and so had to be disqualified. standard, as always with this form of':)„"' petition, was extremely high. In an ordMatoy week prizes would have gone an Christopher Greening, Martin Fagg, Jean Christopher and John Sweetman, the last of whom went happily alliteration-read the letter d. The five winners below get each, and the bonus bottle of Blarlc/Yv 10-year-old Malmsey Madeira (by cot' man of Hedges and Butler Ltd) to Peter With an afotyrpiliciasliyanlaercgdeotveocbaybualarsyergeant With a

voil

I end with my perennial plea. r, don't have a typewriter, please beg or, ten 11"ii, row o w one fordecuple ym w o work. Hanavv" Well. sir, 'e 'obbles in, strips off 'is togs and chucks 'em down — cool as you like — by the dodo. 'E stands there in 'is birthday suit, without s° much as a doodad pinned to 'is chest, an' 'e says — all dewy-eyed like, "Look, sarge, I'm colour-blind; my blood pressure's decupled in the last six months; I've got a dicky ticker, flat feet, back like a bleedin' dromedary, a dud pair of kidneys, dog-leg fingers from arthritis and divers other ailments; I read dyslexically and I'm convinced a doppelganger's followin' me about gallopin' paranoia, the shrink called it. So if the ,not

is?" But I says to 'im, "You'll do, laddie. Get fell in."

(Peter Norman)

• • • and in conclusion, m'lud, may I plead the ex- traordinary pressures to which my client was sub- jected. Disqualified from driving (an unfor- tunate accident with a dromedary when Chipper- fields visited Penge), he turned to installation of neo-Georgian dodos to meet his wife's taste in expensive doodads. But she was no dewy-eyed in- nocent; divers witnesses have described her habits of passing dud cheques and sending seY',exicallY written blackmail notes. This decupl- the strain on their relationship (although described by my client as 'dicky'), which instead oif running straight and true took a series of dog- ,egs. Perverse, some have called it: I call it the mtwentieth-century malaise by which two people el:m.1e as strangers to each other. In short, nci, when Mrs Smith saw a man brandishing a

carving knife in their lounge-dinette it was not Mr Smith, my client, but his doppelganger, (D. A. Prince)

Harvey left the ballroom and wandered dyslex- ically into the Laddies, only to be greeted by shrieks from some females busily powdering divers parts of their bodies. He felt as obvious as a doppelganger in a hall of mirrors. Ten eyeballs swivelled to decuple his embarrassment. He averted his gaze to the level of the dodo and backed out, took off his bow-tie and undid his dicky.

A dog-leg corridor led him to the lifts and he descended to the garage. His dromedary stood where he had parked it, all dewy-eyed and forlorn.

'Well,' spat the quadruped, 'I told you it'd be a dud party.'

`Not a bit,' spat back the biped, 'I've merely come for my doodad.'

From the animal's hump he fished out a hip- flask.

'Watch it, mate. Much more of that and you'll be disqualified from driving dromedaries.' 'Camel-dung,' swore Harvey.

The beast dissolved and Harvey hiccuped. (Bill Anderson) 'We could double, triple or even decuple the number of divers but it won't make the slightest difference to this dud operation,' muttered Maloney to his dewy-eyed confidante and part- ner Polly. 'All we've brought up so far is this bronze statuette of a bloke on a dromedary mounted on a dented dado'.

'Never mind — it wilt do as a doodad for Dad- dy when we go home,' suggested Polly perkily. 'It should cheer him up immensely — specially now he's been disqualified for doing a dog-leg at a roundabout. He always did regard road-signs rather dyslexically. It didn't help when he told the policeman he had at last met his dop- pelganger. Add to that the fact he had no less than seven pals in the dicky of his 1931 Panhard

Sports.' (Louis Finucane) I was escorted, via a dog-leg staircase, by the Headmaster, a veritable doppelganger of Sir Robin Day, spectacles, dicky bow and all.

'This is 4C,' he announced, 'enjoying an art lesson with Miss Rumbelow', indicating a dewy- eyed damsel surrounded by divers noisy children busily painting.

'What are you doing?' I asked one boy, whose picture bore a faint resemblance to a dromedary, but was labelled `Kamale'.

'Just some old doodad,' he muttered. 'Making a dado to go around the room,' inter- rupted Miss Rumbelow.

'What's a dado?' I asked him.

'Miss says it's a "freeze", but that's daft 'cause camels live in hot countries,' he replied.

1 forbore to dicuss orthography with one so dyslexically afflicted, though I suppose that should have disqualified me for the role of HMI. Some people say dud teachers become inspec- tors, but I couldn't do Miss Rumbelow's job if they were to decuple my salary. (0. Smith)