No 3607 Set by Leonora Casement
We asked for a ghost-written autobiography of someone famous.
Report by Ms de Meaner
Totally fab. I loved them all, well most of them. Hon menshes to Will Bellenger (Kathy Lette/Cherie Blair), D A Prince (Jeffrey Archer/Mohamed Fayed), Robin Oakley-Hill (Rudyard Kipling/Bill Gates) and Anne Du Croz (Ian Fleming/John Prescott). £15 to the winners; the bottle goes to Adrian Fry.
Reggie Kray by Jean-Paul Sartre
It was while I was in this bar waiting for my brother that the moment came to me.
A man stepped on my toe as he passed. I remember him clearly, just an ordinary man, with nothing to distinguish him from all the other ordinary men in the world. He wore a plain grey suit, with a white shirt and a dark green and brown striped tie. His greying hair was cut short, with a parting on the left side. He carried an imitation-leather briefcase. He looked at me apologetically, and said: "Sorry, old chap. Clumsy of me."
And as I stared into his bland face, an overpowering sense of alienation, of distance from everything overcame me. The man before me with his apologies, the barman polishing his counter, the couple in the corner discussing furniture, the old men engrossed in their game of cards - what were any of these to me?
In that moment, I realised that existence precedes essence, that it is only our free choices, our actions, which make us what we are, individuals and not a formless part of a formless void.
So I brought my axe down on this geezer's head . . .
Michael Cregan
Cherie Blair by Ruth Rendell
It was a hot night in Tuscany. I had gone to bed early, exhausted by the sheer labour of selecting clothes from my huge collection. But I couldn't sleep; I tossed from side to side. Disturbed by voices, I realised that, by some acoustic peculiarity, I could hear Tony and Alastair talking downstairs.
"Listen," said Alastair, with a strange insistence in his voice, "you don't want Livingstone on the front pages every day, do you? Or the Bearded Buffoon?"
"Well, no," said Tony dubiously, "but I don't like it. It'll upset the routine, interfere with the paperwork."
"I promise you, it's the only way."
There was a long pause. I could visualise Tony, thinking hard.
Then he said:"You win as usual. But let's get one thing clear. You make my decisions, you write my articles, you have to do this one for me."
"No problem," said Alastair. There was silence now, but my brain was racing.
There was a mystery here, one that even Reg Wexford would find tricky. It was to be two long months before the pieces fell into place and I grasped the whole picture.
Ian Birchall
Ken Livingstone by Lewis Carroll
I suddenly found myself in a room of curiously faceless men. They said it was their job to decide whether another group of faceless men should be allowed to decide whether my name went on the ballot for London mayor.
"I should so like to be mayor," I said.
"In that case," said all or some of the faceless men, "you have to agree to do everything our manifesto says."
"Even if it tells me to do wrong or stupid things?" I asked.
"Especially then," the faceless men chorused.
"But I want to represent the views of the people, not your manifesto," I protested. Suddenly, I noticed an enormous grin materialising out of thin air behind the faceless men. "Haven't you realised that our manifesto is what the people think? They just don't know they think it until we tell them," it said.
"You can't tell the people what to think!" I protested.
"We can," the faceless men said. "We got the idea from you and your leftie colleagues at the GLC."
A faceless man handed me the manifesto. "Adopt me," it said. And I did, up to a point.
Adrian Fry
Michael Atherton by Marcel Proust
The third day of the Final Test began like many days of my childhood - dull, overcast, the threat of rain hanging in the still air. Perhaps the immobility of things around us before a fateful occasion reflects simultaneously the calm to which our fearful hearts aspire and the unbearable tension between our highest hopes and darkest forebodings - the certitude that we stand before the immovable, merciless inevitability of destiny, yet the yearning hope that we might even now possess the capability of influencing events still to come, I thought, as, gazing wryly at my bat with the warm recognition reserved for one's closest friends (willow - archetypal symbol of sorrow and tragic inevitability, yet promising such potential power and mastery - strength contained within weakness) and applying the resin gently, mechanically, breathing its familiar aroma, something delicious, nostalgic, sensual was stirring deep within my unconscious. Whether it was the oppressive, ominous humidity of this mournful Lancashire summer's day, the smell of newly rolled grass, or the fact that we were 28 for 7 in reply to India's total of 649 for 2 declared, I experienced certain misgivings. At last, however, I realised what I wanted from life. I wanted it to rain.
David Silverman
No 3610 Set by John Crick
Roy Hattersley thinks there is an Old Testament quality about new Labour. So who is the new Moses, Samson, David, Solomon, Abraham and so on? We want an updated extract from a suitable part of the Bible. Max 200 words and in by 6 January.
E-mail: comp@newstatesman.co.uk
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