Exeunt Singing

Competitors were asked to provide a Christmas pantomime lyric, might be sung by one of the following: `Widow Twankey, Dandini, any of the Denton Kings. having a political flavour, that Man Friday, Captain Hook, or

ON Christmas Eve my first guess was that the majority of entries had been culled second-hand from a six-year-old aborigine taken to a panto- mime for the first time at the point of a gun. Since then I have seen two pantomimes myself and I now appreciate the fact that a few of your efforts show a lively understanding of the things that keep pantomime producers in business. If your creative atmosphere was that of an extravagant variety entertainment with music largely consist- ing of humorous songs way above the heads of young nephews and nieces much too preoccupied with ice cream to worry about the noise from the stage, you were on the right track. Similarly, a light-hearted abandonment of the normal rules of metre and rhyme was permissible, since the days of Arne and Shield have apparently gone for ever. There is always the problem of knowing what sort of tunes were at the backs of your minds and I have justified many'of your verses on the grounds that, in the days of the Romans, the 'chorus' was at one, time a singer declaiming recitative to the accompaniment 'of a flute! So the first and 'twentieth. centuries' have joined together for no reason other than to put me in a receptive condi- tion of mind as I return to the job of adjudication.

Complex stage directions, Ciriderellas, Robber Barons and Humpty-Dumpties were turfed out for reasons which are of such long standing that they are too tedious to reiterate. One Widow Twankey offered My delight on a Friday night Is a supper of faggots and peas.

failed to see the political affinity until the last line which I reproduce without comment: Paggotski, faggotski, commissar, please !' Diony- sius had the brilliant idea of associating Man Friday in a rather topical way with Christmas Island and suggesting the tune Pennies [Penney's] from Heaven'; although the entry is not as good as those of the prizewinners this approach earns half a guinea for its originality-enter the Good Fairy! B. Davies decided to retire his Captain Hook to the following : Yo! Ho! Ho! So now I've got to go! A directorship in industry Will teach me in a week more about a leak Than forty years' experience at sea! W. G. Daish was another that exhausted himself in one verse, but his single word in parenthesis is a model well worth examining; his Window Twankey sings : Widows like me don't hardly care to mention The cost of living coupled with our pay; How we fiddle with a liddle biddy pension To make ends meet the acrobatic way. (Action.) A prize of one and a half guineas goes to J. Sweetman for the following entry which strikes just about the right note : When Mr. Crusoe came last month He very soon put me right, With a purchase tax on coconuts To pay for bonfire night.

CHORUS : For Robinson he's a Tory,

And I'm a Socialist And we've made the parrot A Liberal-National-Non-Interventionalist.

I didn't know what a risk I ran, When I lived all by myself, Without any rates or taxes To pay for my National Health.

CHORUS

We've started National Service, We've called us up last week. And I'm on duty on Christmas Day, At the top of Spyglass Peak.

CHORUS

Joyce Johnson will have to be content with a very honourable mention for something which could have the herd behind me singing Widow Twankey's very catchy chorus instead of playing leapfrog (?):

Whore's me BRITE and where's me SNO Just rinse them oncely, twicely, FOAMISUDS and Wyrenow

Should get the'dirt off nicely.

Vera' Telfer, still with Widow Twankey, earns three guineas because . . . well, see for your- selves : I take in the washing for NATO, It really is rather a mess; When it gets in a tangle, I must use the mangle, As they don't like it put in the press. I take in the washing for Khrushchev After an embassy spree;

I find I can cope if he favours soft soap, Salts of lemon's too drastic for me.

I take in the washing for bankers, Who pay me the rate for the job; But one autumn week my sink sprang a leak And it cost them a couple of bob.

I take in the washing for bosses; I haven't much use for the plebs; But I'm sorry to say that after next May, I can do no more work for the dabs.

The remaining entries range from mediocre to poor; the best of the worst, as it were, have been sent by Rhoda Tuck Pook and Gloria Prince. The only other entry that did not look as though it had been written in a Christmas shopping queue came from Allan M. Laing, and for this he receives the last guinea : I'm the Demon King Inflation : I've lots of sly devices To help along the naughty game Of reckless spending, without shame, And rising costs and prices.

I chuckle when I see the pound Take still another knocking : I nudge landlords to raise the rent, And at the Bank Rate's seven per cent., A scornful snook I'm cocking.

(Here six verses are omitted.) And if I have my wicked will, There'll be a fine sensation, With five-pound notes a penny each, And won't that raise a horrid screech (Ha! Ha!) from all the nation.

PRIZES

The Good Fairy has been and gone, By now you know the worst: The four lines here are just for those That read the last bit first.