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Competition No 3787

Set by Bazza, 23 June

Private Eye referred to the "masturbation diet". We asked for other wacky diets, with instructions.

Report by Ms de Meaner

Superb. There were quite a few where one or two lines leapt from the page - four of whom can have £5 book tokens. The rest get £20. The overall winner is D A Prince, who also gets the Tesco vouchers.

The Masochist's Diet

For breakfast, you may have one slice of dry toast BECAUSE THAT'S ALL YOU DESERVE, YOU MISERABLE WORM.

You will eat nothing more until lunch - IS THAT CLEAR, YOU SNIVELLING WRETCH? Then you will have one lettuce leaf, one tomato, and one very thin slice of cold meat. You will eat this from a dog bowl on the floor while on your hands and knees wearing a collar and leash LIKE THE REVOLTING LITTLE CUR THAT YOU ARE!

Next is the evening meal, which will consist of one round of bread and cheese. Both the bread and the cheese will be mouldy and stale, BECAUSE ANYTHING'S GOOD ENOUGH FOR A DISGUSTING LUMP OF EXCREMENT LIKE YOU!

You may have had something for supper, but knowing you and your nasty habits you will undoubtedly have been a NAUGHTY BOY! So it's off to a cold bedroom, get the whip out, and FIFTY STINGING LASHES.

And in the morning, when you weigh yourself, if you haven't lost at least five pounds, you know what to do. That's right - the policeman's handcuffs and the cupboard under the stairs, SCUM! . . .

Michael Cregan

The Waist Land

The Eliot Diet gets to the heart of eating ("We are the hollow men/We are the stuffed men") and in poetic form gives the strategies you need for substantial weight loss and increased abstraction. Flesh and blood is frail and weak - but stick to it; even a 'potamus can take wing!

Essentials

". . . smell of steaks in passageways . . ." The essence of steakness: savour the smell, but don't sink your teeth into the meat. Think Abstract Entities. Hear the rattling of breakfast plates - but don't think what's on them.

What to eat

A cooking egg: not the freshest and most appetising of anything - that would only encourage excess, and in your beginning is your end. Consider every consequence: do I dare eat a peach?

How much?

Keep it small. Measure out your life in coffee spoons (not ladles!).

Think before you eat

". . . a hundred indecisions/And for a hundred visions and revisions/Before the taking of a toast and tea." Before you taste a crumb: think. Do I want this? Do I need this now? Change your mind. Look at it from all sides. In the end, you will lose interest. Humankind cannot bear very much reality.

D A Prince

People have used it since the dawn of prehistory. It's the Hunter-Gatherer Diet! Be the fittest and the leanest.

If you want to eat it, you have to catch it - even grow it. Catching, growing and killing keep you on your slender toes. It's Nature's way. Find berries and nuts as you walk through the park; roast them when you get home. Pigeons, too. And squirrels. Earthworms make a tasty meal, fried or boiled. Remember the French and frogs' legs. Scan the ponds. In the country, no farmer will begrudge you a few ears of corn. Milled, then baked, they're full of nutrition. Even in town, there's wholesome protein around. You're never more than a few feet from a rat. If they were good enough to roast during the siege of Paris, they're good enough now. What do you need? Just a trap and a small wood fire.

Hunter-gatherers don't live too long. But they're superbly muscular - and slender. You can be, too.

Barrie Heads

As a schoolboy, having heard The Diet of Worms mentioned quite often in history, I decided to try it out for myself.

David Barton

The No 10 Survival Diet: Twice a week, a special vegetable stew made of carrots - to improve night vision - and Psilocybe semilanceata (Liberty Cap mushroom), known for its hallucinogenic properties. This mixture should enable you to see weapons of mass destruction . . .

Ian Birchall

The Quiet Diet: You may eat as much as you like, but you must do so noiselessly. Any audible consumption results in a six-hour ban on further food intake.

Paul Brummell

The Violence Diet: Chase your prey around the kitchen. No more obesity, with food that runs faster than you.

Robin Oakley-Hill

No 3790 Set by George Cowley

Simon Heffer referred on Radio 4 to "illiberal liberals". Could we have a revealing article by just such a person (real or imaginary), or a piece about this person and their political position.

Max 200 words by 25 July (to appear in issue dated 4 August. E-mail: comp@newstatesman.co.uk

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