Olympic gold medals can be withdrawn retrospectively if athletes are found to have used drugs that enhanced their performance. We asked for a newspaper report on the grounds that a Nobel prizewinner in literature/ peace/economics is similarly to be stripped of his or her title Set by Ian Birchall

Performance anxiety

Report by Ms de Meaner

Harder than you thought, n'est-ce pas? An hon mensh to J Seery for Milton Friedman ("In a sensational development, the Nobel Committee withdrew Milton Friedman's Economics Prize and substituted the Literature Prize . . ."). £20 to the three winners, the best of whom - Liam Kenson - gets the Tesco vouchers.

Merton H Miller's Prize revoked

The Nobel Committee today revoked the 1990 Economics Prize awarded to Merton H Miller. Miller's award recognised his part in the theory that the choice between equity financing and borrowing does not affect a firm's market value and average costs of capital. A leading free-market advocate, Miller demonstrated that government regulation of futures contracts is likely to do more harm than good, while showing that companies use financial derivatives not to make huge bets, but to do exactly the opposite - get out of bets by buying insurance.

When asked by the Mail why the committee was denigrating a champion of market freedom - a world expert on derivatives - and why now, a spokesman was economic with his words: "Isn't it bloody obvious?"

Liam Kenson

Hemingway's Prize removed

Ernest Hemingway has tested positive for Muscular Prozac. Officials on the Nobel Committee tried unsuccessfully to break down his sentences. Several neglected adverbs were taken into care. Although verbal workers visited previously, they had failed to spot overworked adjectives in gloomy passages. He fell into bad habits of the period and became hooked on full stops. His boast was, "I can finish with them whenever." But to fill the emptiness between dots he became increasingly dependent on hard words. Never one to inject with hyperbole, he was nevertheless caught out by excessive punctuation marks. In any other drug-user, this would have meant a farewell to arms. His 1954 Nobel Prize now goes to P G Wodehouse.

John Samson

Luigi Pirandello's Prize stripped

Luigi Pirandello, winner of the 1934 Nobel Prize in Literature, was yesterday retrospectively stripped of the award. According to the Swedish Academy in Stockholm, his play Six Characters in Search of an Author was found to contain traces of performance-enhancing shrugs. A spokesperson commented: "It may be the dramatisation of the artistic process of creation - a trick of the play - and perhaps a purely innocent act, but the characters are clearly seen to raise their shoulders on a number of occasions to express indifference. The effect on the audience is soporific and potentially hallucinatory, with huge gaps being created between illusion and reality. It places other playwrights in a disadvantaged position. The Academy had no other choice."

John O'Byrne

No 4058 New Poet Laureate

Set by Hank T Romein

Please supply an application for the post in verse from a candidate of your choice: an established poet, a songwriter, or even someone with less obvious qualifications. David Blunkett, for example, has inflicted his scribblings on us before now.

To be in by 8 January

Email:comp@newstatesman.co.uk

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