No. 1295: The winners

Jaspistos reports: Competitors were asked for typical comment by a well-known jour- nalist on the banning by a future govern- ment of the private motor-car, and/or the consumption of alcohol.

Not a single imitation of Jeffrey Bernard, who would surely have been waxing bitter and rhetorical in a dry Coach and Horses. Very few of Levin, but I admit that packing a single Levinesque sentence into 150 words presents a problem. None of Taki, P. J. Kavanagh or Colin Welch. Perhaps regular Spectator columnists are inimitable. Not so William Deedes of the Telegraph: 'We predict that after the old-world novelty of seeing traps and broughams on the motor- ways has worn off the Government will rue the day when in wooing the .greens it lost, along with the more substantial blue vote, its soul and sense of direction' (George Moor).

The winners below get £10 each, and Nell L. Wregible takes two bottles of Château Gruaud-Larose 1976 as the bonus prize. I know I offered three bottles, but at the time I didn't know it was going to be this superexcellent wine. It goes with the com- pliments of Bibendum, 113 Regent's Park Rd, Primrose Hill, London NW 1 (01 596 9761).

John Junor I notice that the Treasury has stuck a cork in the national bottle. I have not yet noticed any sign of it sticking a cork in another place — its own big mouth.

It may have abolished the traditional right of an English labourer to quench his thirst with English beer. It may have deprived the drinking taxpayer of his chance to invest in the Health Service. It has certainly made sure that service will have less brain damage to deal with. For the moment.

Is this public-spirited? Or is it the bloody- minded idea of a bunch of pansy teetotallers? I haven't a clue.

What I know is that it has robbed Glasgow of its cultural heritage.

And that there is something foreign about hav- ing to quaff Horlicks when we watch Match of the Day.

What next? A tap-water tax?

Exactly who do these tinpot Ayatollahs think they are?

(Nell L. Wregible) Keith Waterhouse Remember the days when there were pints? A pint cost half-a-crown or, in a posh boozer, three bob. 'Litres' were a gigantic joke.

I remember, too, my Aunt Maud in Cleckheaton, strait-laced as a whalebone corset, who said pubs should be locked on Sundays because it was sinful to enjoy yourself on the Sabbath. She'd have chained up park-swings, as well. And Maudie was a joke.

So they brought in litres. We laughed and said they wouldn't last. Remember?

Then Berm put up the price of a litre to a fiver — sorry, forty Euromarks.

And pubs were closed on Sundays, courtesy of Chancellor Kent. He wouldn't last, we joked. Remember?

Then bless my soul if Prime Minister Banks hasn't produced the brightest punch-line of all. Prohibition. Tell that at the Sunderland Empire.

Well, you can't, of course, The Empire went up the spout when they shut the theatres.

Remember them? (Ron Jowker)

Arthur Marshall

I was making my way to my local tea-rooms yesterday when I recalled with horror the Government's moves to 'ditch' the automobile. Until then I had positively welcomed the pros- pect of more civilised use being made of those flat and rather boring tracts of countryside, the Motorways. How jolly, I thought, to hold ballroom dancing rallies on the abandoned MI. ('I do beg your pardon, Mrs Carstairs! I didn't realise you were making for the hard shoulder.') What fun to make a fine tilth of the M4 and hand it over to that happy band, with ruddy cheeks and trousers staunchly secured by old school ties, the Amateur Gardeners. ('Such splendid leeks, Colonel! And all the way to Wales!') I had forgotten, however, that I shall be forced to take my morning tea without the added excitement of watching shoppers park. Quel dommage!

(N. J. Warburton) Auberon Waugh

As usual, of course, it is the lower classes who will suffer least from the new legislation. The gaseous filth they habitually drink, for no better reason than that they are constantly assured 'It's what yer right arm's for', is an insult to the name of beer and should have been prohibited long ago. Besides, with alcohol unavailable, the ever- prodigal National Health Service will doubtless devise a new pill, to be dispensed on demand by overworked doctors from the New Common- wealth, which will reduce its users to a similarly maudlin or belligerent state for a fraction of the personal expense. Meanwhile those of us with the discrimination to appreciate a claret of tolerable breeding will be deprived of yet another of life's harmless pleasures. The interests of the protect- people-from-themselves mollycoddlers have coincided perfectly with those of the let's-drag- everyone-down-together egalitarian yobboes, and this preposterous law is the result.

(Peter Norman) Keith Waterhouse Hands up those who fancy living in Sweden? Well, why not, you daft buggers? Because that's what we're fast becoming — another sleek social democracy where you can't go out and pickle your insides in neat Teachers if you've a mind to, because it's anti-social. Where the corner pub has been converted into an antique shoppe where you can buy real olde-worlde Martini ashtraYs and those yard-of-ale thingies to hang over your fireplace. Where beer is something they put in the Silvikrin to give your hair-do added bounce.

Where a bloke who's been given the elbow's ex- pected to drown his sorrows in a cup of steaming Bovril. Where instead of a comfy chat with the barmaid at The Feathers you tell your troubles to a prim little social worker who tells you it's all capitalism's fault really.

And at least in Sweden you'd get a decent open