COMPETITION

Namesakes

Jaspistos

In Competition No. 1534 you were in- vited to provide a sample of dialogue between two well-known figures in history or fiction with similar names.

A delightful entry, rich in grotesque couplings — Thomas and Oliver Hardy, Billy and Cyril Connolly, Dick Francis and the saint of that name, 'Fats' and Edmund Waller, John Wain and John Wayne, Philip and Christopher Marlowe (`Say, you're not the Marlowe that old Polish guy sent up the river in Africa?'), and, oddest of the lot, Carroll's Bruno encountering the boxer: 'I'm looking for Sylvie."Yer wot?"She's a fairy, like me."Look, squire, I don't want no bovver . . .'

Honourable mentions go to Connie Yapp, John Sweetman, Russell Lucas, G. Goatley, Peter Bond and Robert Baird, £15 apiece to the winners printed below, and the bonus bottle of Tokay Pinot Gris 1985, donated by Atkinson Baldwin and Co., St Mary's House, 42 Vicarage Cres- cent, London SW11, belongs to Noel Petty.

The Irish RM Meets a Neighbour Yeates: D'ye hunt yourself, Mr Yeats?

Yeats: Only the heron wheeling on the wing and the unicorn in the moonlight.

Yeates: (Uneasily) I was thinking more of the red

bushy-tailed fellow. D'ye not go out with the Galway Blazers?

Yeats: I have seen the blaze of Ilium brought low, and heard the voice of Helen calling over the sea-margin.

Yeates: (Eagerly) Ye've travelled a good deal, then?

Yeats: I have followed the way of Vedanta and Sailed to Byzantium, but evermore sought again the grey mist; and after the mist, the wild swans; and after the swans, Cuchulain.

Yeates: I'd better speak plainly, Mr Yeats. Some things I can turn a blind eye to, but swans are Crown property. Mr Cuchulain may be your

tenant, but if he goes after the swans have to come down hard.

(Noel Petty)

Kim: (Opens door) Scarlett — coming on the tiger hunt? Scarlen: (Pettishly) Tiger hunt! That's all you -think of. (Whispers) I'm wearing my new silk garters. Do you want to see?

Kim: (Stoutly) No! Scarlett: Fiddle-de-dee! Don't pretend you don't

want to, Kimball O'Hara. Anyway, tigers fright- en me.

Kim: Pooh! Don't be a baby.

Scarlett: (Whispers again) Kim,, did you know that I am old enough to, have a baby? Kim: (Impatiently) Well, go ahead and have one. Have six, and I hope they all catch the measles. 'I'm going. The old guru says that if I show courage in the presence of tiger I will acquire merit.

Scarlett: (Frantically) Kim, don't go. Don't leave me. I'm dying of boredom. Kim: I don't give a hoot. (Slams door) Scarlett: (Distraught) He's gone. I won't think of it. Not now. I'll think of it tomorrow.

(Stanley Shaw)

Clive: Well, Henry, you're looking a bit jet- lagged, but welcome all the same. Don't think me provocative, but Gertrude Stein said there has to be something weird about a man with two first names. How do you feel about that? Henry: It is with all too familiar a sense of dread, of having, as it were, been `rumbled', that I face this kind of public exposure, knowing (as I feel almost sure I do) that there will inevitably be a rummaging in private cupboards and attics — les plus intimes, I wanly suspect — with a view to bringing to the face of the unfortunate subject the deepest, the most crimson, of blushes. Clive: I shouldn't wotry, cher, maitre. It's prob- ably just the studio lights. We're taking a break now. Stay with us.

Henry: I unhappily expire.

(Basil Ransome-Davies) `But, Dave, . you could have called them the Mary .Wollstonecraft Falls or the Emmeline Pankhurst Falls.'

`They're awfu' lang names.'

`Anything would have been better than Vic- toria.'

`If ye'd seen the size of them, laddie, ye'd realiSe. And anyway, your wee Emrheline wasna born till I came back hame.'

`Why couldn't you call them after an African leader?'

`Lookit here, Ken, your London County Council may want its Oliver TambO Crescents in Brent and suchlike, but this was 1856 and most of the Africans I. met had a mind to eat me.'

`Yon were a bit of an old Chauvinist, too, I'd say, as well as a racist. Why were -there no women,on your expeditions, or Irishmen?'

•

. Didna I talc" my dumpy, wee Mary on my first journey? Central Africa's no a place fora lasSie — and I'm having nae truck with your Fenians

`Come across any newts?' (Richard Snailharn)

Sam: To think of anyone flying, Ma'am, is matter of wonderment; that a woman should much as wish to hurtle through the air W014 appear not only unseemly, but the height insanity. If such activities are really necessa they should clearly become a male prerogativ Amy: If birds had felt that way, Doctor, we' have pretty few species around.

Sam: But then, to use this regrettable co veyance to go to Australia, Ma'am, a contine which no one in their right mind would eve contemplate! A barren land, I am informed, of convicts and kangaroos.

A, iny: The aim was to prove that I could halfway round the world. It just so happens that Australia was at the other end of my trip, Sam: Ma'am, you could make I.,Ogic itself see mere gibberish.

(E. 0. Parrot