Set by Brendan J O'Byrne "Little Red Riding Hood was a fantasist," opined Ben Macintyre in the Times. "She made up the whole story to explain why she was wandering through the woods in the middle of the night. Then she cried wolf, as humans have done since the earliest times." We asked for the truth behind other children's bedtime stories

Report by Ms de Meaner

A popular comp, with lots of new names. Welcome, Maria Ronner, Graham Lovegrove, Meghann Downing, Demelza Baker, Andrew Stanley and Andrew Stern (and if inadvertently I have welcomed you before, be grateful!). I liked Adrian Fry ("The wolf's a red herring. All that expository Brechtian hoopla about how he's going to huff and puff and blow the pigs' houses down just doesn't wash"). Sid Field ("The three bears returned and Mr Khrushchev, Mr Stalin and Mr Brezhnev found Goldilocks and quizzed her . . .") and David Silverman ("Recent research indicates that certain species of frog share over 99 per cent of their genetic make-up with certain species of prince . . .") were similarly well up to par. Hon menshes to them. £20 each to the winners. Best of the best is Michael Brereton, who also gets the Tesco vouchers.

Jack and Jill

The original account was suppressed by the US State Department, but a surviving fragment indicates the actual course of events:

Jack and Jill went up the hill
To fetch some heavy water,
For Jack and Tom had built a bomb
(Jill said they didn't oughter).

We believe that there then followed a scuffle with a group of people from the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, alerted by Jill (at some cost to herself), in the course of which Jack fell down and broke his crown. As a result, a nuclear crisis was avoided.

Graham Dukes

Cinderella

Cinderella never went to the ball. Her Fairy Godmother booked the coach for the wrong time. The Prince spent all evening dancing with Camilla, a close friend's wife, with whom he was having a secret affair. She was in disguise, but was nearly recognised, and made a hurried exit; the Prince rapidly invented a story about a mystery woman and a lost slipper.

When the Prince came touring the area, followed by paparazzi from Hello! magazine, Cinderella realised this was her chance for the good life. She knew about Camilla, but reasoned: "Three's a crowd, but two out of three ain't bad."

Ian Birchall

Goldilocks

First, let's be clear. This isn't the story of Goldilocks - she may be the heroine, but she isn't the main protagonist. That role definitely belongs to Little Bear. The whole episode takes place in his fervid imagination. It is, significantly, in his chair that Goldilocks feels comfortable; she eats his porridge - I'll leave you to decipher that one for yourselves; and in his bed she goes to sleep. This last, plus the porridge symbolism, indicates Little Bear's guilty feelings about his thoughts - so much so, he eventually has her "escape". When he gets Mother and Father to share his "indignation", hypocrisy has crept in. And why pretend your family are bears?

Michael Brereton

Set by Corvus Maximus

Explain in ballad form how your swift journey from Westminster to the Scottish hustings actually generated a smaller carbon footprint than your opponent's.

Max 16 lines by 26 April
Email: comp@newstatesman.co.uk

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