No 3590 Set by John Crick
You were asked for plausible-sounding character or job references for villains, real or fictional (Hitler was banned).
Report by Ms de Meaner
A healthy number of entries, given that it's summer and most of you disappear off to Tuscany or wherever it is that compers go at this time. And this week I have no people to poke fun at, although I can reprimand Anne Du Croz for her winning entry for comp no 3585. According to Elizabeth Young (who has helpfully written in), Hannibal Lecter's eyes weren't an "incredible blue" - they were maroon. Who you're thinking of, Anne me darlin', is the scrumptious Anthony Hopkins. (Yes, yes, I know I didn't spot it either.)
This week the winners can have £5, and the bottle of champers goes to N Syrett.
I commend Mr Capone to you as a man with considerable entrepreneurial skills, somewhat unorthodox, though undeniably effective, business methods, and remarkable persuasion. Like many immigrants, he has embraced the American way of life wholeheartedly. He believes in the pioneering spirit and the cut and thrust of fierce competition; he is a champion of Big Business (and there are few businesses bigger or more diverse than his); and the right of the individual to bear arms is, for him, a matter of profound conviction. As for the institutions - the judiciary, the police force and so on - where, he argues, would he be without them? And where would they be without him?
But this is not the whole man. There is a hinterland of delight in Grand Opera; a sentimental attachment to ritual celebrations like St Valentine's Day; a fondness for the company of women who work as hard as he does at wealth-creation. He is a philanthropist, giving the Great American Public what they most want. He is a freedom-fighter, too, resisting the intervention of government in the affairs of ordinary people, who wish only to enjoy, as he has done, the fruits of their labours.
Watson Weeks
Of course, it's not all beer and skittles being the Dark Lord upon the Dark Throne, and Sauron, ruler of Mordor, has had to take the rough with the smooth. His decision to consign most of his diabolical powers to a small, golden ring, which he then lost, he has accepted was questionable. But he is a spirit who learns by his mistakes, and his recent attempt to impose a brutal order of despair upon Middle Earth was admirably single-minded.
One cannot help but feel that, were it not for the bad luck that can blight the fortunes of even the most assiduous dictator, his efforts would have been rewarded. His management skills were manifest in his welding of a disparate collection of orcs, goblins and dark riders into a force that really played to its strengths, and his use of the symbol of the all-seeing eye represented marketing at its most potent and intimidating. His genius for corrupting good intentions would see him well-placed in the European Commission.
N Syrett
Whatever Dr Hawley Harvey Crippen has done for suburbia, he has done for the medical profession. Most particularly, he has contributed to the health of the nation (most philanthropically, being an American national) by drawing attention to the damp and unpleasant conditions of coal-cellars in general, and those in the Tufnell Park area in particular. Events have shown him to possess what those in the trade would call "a surgical spirit", and he has proved especially adept at popularising the many patent medicines for Munyon's, the medical advertising agency where he was latterly manager. An excellent employer, held in high regard in the typing-pool, he has ventured back recently into transatlantic travel. He has journeyed modestly and anonymously from Antwerp to Canada, accompanied only by a friend who showed the love of fashion they shared by dressing in what may come to be called "a trouser suit". Dr Crippen, who has also been tremendously influential in the field of wireless telegraphy, has been living in gracious and admirable isolation for a short while, where he has his mind on higher things. I commend him to you.
Will Bellenger
Dick Nixon is a fine man, whose career testifies to the opportunities allowed by the American Way. Here is no dogmatist, no slave to abstract doctrines. Despite his Quaker background, he knew when to get tough with the Free World's enemies. He helped punish the traitor Alger Hiss, who sold us to Russia; but he wasn't too stiff-necked to miss the chance of mending fences with China. He was loyal, maybe too loyal, to his subordinates, but firm in dismissing those whose misconduct imperilled his presidency.
No, Dick Nixon isn't one of those who refuse to learn and alter their thinking. Not a fanatic like Barry Goldwater, nor a liberal stooge like Nelson Rockefeller, he's never been tied to any rigid programme. And here is a man with a heart, too. When the Democrats and their crypto-communist allies tried to murder him politically, he dared to bare his emotions on TV. Who can forget the throb in his voice as he told the national audience about Checkers? He deserved all the campaign contributions that brought in.
Lincoln didn't have it any tougher. Dick Nixon is the people's choice and for my money he always will be.
Basil Ransome-Davies
No 3593 Set by Margaret Rogers
Smallweed in the Guardian has asked: "What is an oik? And how does an oik relate to a lout, oaf or yobbo?" Can we enlighten him? You have a maximum of 200 words. The more complicated the entries, and packed with as many additional terms of abuse - yahoo, roughneck, thug - as you can think of, the better we shall be pleased. Entries in by 26 August.
E-mail: comp@newstatesman.co.uk
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