Win vouchers to spend at any Tesco store

Competition No 3856

Set by Margaret Rogers, 1 November

You were asked for amended slogans and publicity bumf for a well-known product.

Report by Ms de Meaner

Amended slogans were asked for. Not the same slogan, dear G M Davis ("Probably the best lager in the world"), who accompanied it with an exegesis, albeit an amusing one, of the meaning of probability as it impacts on the text. I feel the glimmer of another comp coming on here. The four winners can have £20 each. However, the Tesco vouchers for sheer excellence go to David Silverman, as a reward for sending in two entries for me to choose from, the second being: "You know you've been quangoed". Hmm.

After a hard day's slog at the office, grappling with your conscience, why not bite into something soft and satisfying, in the church of your choice?

Where better to unwrap that soft brown wrapper, and reveal the luxurious oblong, with its three-in-one combination of nougat, caramel and passionate chocolate?

Go on, take a pew. As your knees sink into the hassock, bow your head, take a soul-searching bite and feel like heaven in a trice. You'll soon be confessing that there's more to the universe than meets the eye.

Because Mars is an almighty combination, a salvation that waits for you, the truth you can really feel inside you. It's the power of prayer, the healing miracle, the saving grace.

Isn't it a blessing that there is so much meaning in Mars? Go on, confess it: with a Mars inside you, you can feel spiritual, you can feel uplifted. You can feel God. A Mars a day helps you work, rest and pray.

Bill Greenwell

It's here at last. Beige: the mobile phone you can use on the hospital ward or in the doctor's waiting room.

Use it down at the Jobcentre or in the lounge of your residential care home.

Blend in with your surroundings, without disturbing that delicate feng shui balance or your own personal colour aura.

Beige offers you a unique guarantee: our handsets will not clash with any Homebase Anaglypta wallpaper patterns or magnolia silk or matt emulsions.

A survey of Hertfordshire homeowners revealed complete satisfaction.

Nostalgic for those pastel shades of yesteryear? Wondering: "Ou sont les beiges d'antan?"

Well, they're back. Be co-ordinated! It's all the rage. The future's Beige!

David Silverman

Scene: Tony Blair walks down the road, swaying slightly.

A pink elephant appears. Blair turns up his nose. The elephant disappears.

A red elephant, marked with a hammer and sickle appears. Blair snaps his fingers. The elephant disappears.

A desert scene; numerous nuclear warheads piled up in the sand. Near by, a camel grazes at an oasis. Blair raises his arms as if to greet a long-lost friend.

Voice-over: "I bet he drinks something stronger than Carling Black Label."

Ian Birchall

You never actually own a Patek Philippe watch. You merely look after it for the next generation of street crime statistics.

After all, what is ownership? Something set in stone? Or simply a capitalist construct to justify social inequality? Possessions can weigh you down - and, if they tempt others into innovative ways of taking possession of them, can seriously damage your health. And wealth. While we pass through this life, mere tenants of our small patch of earth, why should we worry over fighting to retain what we can't take with us into eternity? And if you hope to pass possessions down through your sons, are you not merely halting the circulation of wealth? How do your own children differ from others of their own generation? Can the ties that bind you be expressed only in ticking hands? And, remember, it's a wise child that knows its own father.

D A Prince

No 3859 Set by Harry Barker

In 1854, Theodor Mommsen asserted that the assassination of Julius Caesar was "the most untimely murder since the world began". You can either justify this, citing the wide-ranging effects of JC's death, or think of an alternative.

Max 150 words by 2 December. E-mail: comp@newstatesman.co.uk

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