Competition

No. 1196: Silly season

Set by E. 0. Parrott: From an imaginary mail-order catalogue you are invited to supply cajoling descriptions of at least five totally useless Christmas gifts (maximum 150 words). Entries to 'Competition No. 1196' by 21 December. The bonus prize for this and the next three competitions will be three bottles of Harvey's No. 1 Claret.

No. 1193: The winners

Jaspistos reports: Competitors were asked for an extract from a sub-Wildean or sub

Cowardly play in which the characters strain to be epigrammatically witty to no, or ghastly, effect.

This competition was more difficult than it looked for a reason that only struck me after I had set it: that bad epigrams may be even more difficult to invent than good ones. What prompted me to set it was coming across an entry in the solemn notebook I kept when I was eighteen: 'I make it a rule never to play the martyr unless the am phitheatre is packed and the lions are stuffed', together with the memory of an actor friend of mine who, as the villain in a subChristie whodunnit, had to sneer the lines: 'Inspector, there are two things I cannot abide — an indifferent hock and a crooked stocking seam.' Not many of you managed to keep afloat for long in the sparkling shallows. George Moor pushed off in good style with: 'Love at first sight too often means that an optician was not consulted early enough', but after that his feet began touching the bottom. Most of you sank under the weight of the obligation to be, uncharacteristically, unsuccessfully brilliant.

The four winners printed below, however, seem to me to have brought it off, and they get a tenner each for doing so. The last bonus bottle of Cockburn's Special Reserve Port goes to J. Dean, whom I rely on not to water it like his Butler. A special vote of thanks from all of us is due to Cockburn Smithers and Co. for having so generously endowed twelve of our weekly entertainments.

(Scene: Lord Sidewinder's gun-room. Enter Lord Sidewinder and Hargreaves the gamekeeper.) Lord S: Game's pretty thin this year, Hargreaves. Hargreaves: Her Ladyship insists that Lent is strictly observed in the coverts, my Lord.

Lord S: Eh?

(Enter Ronald, Lord Sidewinder's son.) Lord S. Ah, Ronald, I hear you've been sent down. Disgraceful! Ronald: Oxford is like the train to Didcot. One is never certain where one will alight, due to the state of the track.

(Enter Celia.) Ronald: (Wearily) Kissing one's sister is rather like looking at Duchamp's Mona Lisa — one wonders whether the moustache might not be dispensed with.

(Celia weeps.) Hargreaves: Bear up, Miss, remember sisterly affection is like a butler watering the port, best kept within reasonable limits.

(Gong sounds.) Lord S: Good-oh, grub up.

(They go in.) Hargreaves: When the Last Trump sounds for the Upper Class it will be sounded on a dinner gong, as like as not. (J. Dean) Vincent: Then she left, and took up with a Cotswold clothier.

Edward: Very hilly, the Cotswolds.

Vincent: Possibly. One reads of these places. Edward: And what of the stout clothier? Did he suit her?

Vincent: History does not relate.

Edward: In my experience, old boy, it does very little else.

Vincent: Oh, I don't know! It frequently repeats itself.

Edward: Not unlike your dear ex-wife. Speaking of whom, how are you and Bobo agreeing these days?

Vincent: My dear fellow, there are only two ways to behave towards one's ex-wife: if she's remarried, make love to her; if she's not, make love to her sister.

Edward: And if she has no sister?

Vincent: The question does not arise. No gentleman of any degree of breeding marries a sisterless woman. (Gerard Benson) (The rockery at Muldoons. Charles is at work with a small garden fork. Enter Gerald.) Gerald: Weeding, Charles?

Charles: Dear weeds, so like us: we're weedy, and wish we weren't; they're weeded, and wish they weren't! (Enter Mrs Waventry in black.) Here comes a woman with a past!

Gerald: Their pasts are so often our futures. Charles: And whenever we invest in them, they slump! Have you ever invested, Mrs Waventry? Mrs Waventry: No: only divested! We women have but one commodity.

Gerald: And yours was — unsound?

Mrs Waventry: Never: for it has won me — my weeds!

(Exeunt Gerald, Mrs Waventry, and Charles, arms round each other's waists, laughing hysterically.) (Roger Jeffreys) Tristan: ...but, Laetitia, there is absolutely no point in being naive. The naive are invariably praised for being inordinately clever.

Laetitia: True. But every genius I meet is simpleminded.

Tristan: My dear, geniuses work so terribly hard. That is why they are simple: mental exercise is thoroughly brainless.

Laetitia: I expect that's why most scientists are bachelors: husbands are frightfully clever. Tristan: That is why they are so frightful. I devote our marriage to being frightful.

Laetilia: But you never seem frightful!

Tristan: Only because you are naive. If there's one thing worse than being naïve, it's being very naive.

Laetitia: I do not follow.

Tristan: That is because you are naïve.

(Ellen Brigwell)