COMPETITION
No. 585: Vale and salve
Christopher Booker's The Neophiliacs and David Bailey's Goodbye Baby and Amen recently identified some influential trend. setters of the past decade, many of whom will surely see 1970 as marking the end of their gilded heyday. The usual prizes for a verse 'Lament for the 'sixties' from any one of them; or for an optimistic 'Ode to the 'seventies' from any up and coming young pacemaker, whatever his calling, who might relish the prospect of making the next decade his own. Maximum sixteen lines; entries, marked 'Competition No. 585,' by 9 January.
No. 582: The winners
Trevor Grove reports: Commercial Christ- mas has thrown up the usual plethora of Father Christmases in toyshops all over the country. Competitors were invited to provide an excerpt from a Which? report on Father Christmases as a guide to which of these genial old gentlemen (and where) offer the best whiskerage per chin, value for money etc. Judging from the comments received, the said genial old gentlemen are generally held in rather low regard. By far the most effective demonstration of antagonism to the blatant commercialism of the whole thing came from the twelve Father Christ- mases, of both sexes, who were recent- ly arrested for picketing Selfridges to show their disapproval; W. F. N. Watson appeared to share their view and wins three guineas: 'The first thing we had to decide about com- mercial Father Christmases was whether they bore any relation at all to the real thing. We are reluctantly obliged to report that few home-produced varieties measured up to an acceptable standard of verisimilitude. Not one of those tested had any worthwhile knowledge of reindeer-husbandry, sleigh- driving or chimney-climbing. Seven models proved to have very poor patience-rating. two, indeed, actually striking our most per- sistent tester: the same two, we regarded as below standard in fondness for children. Leaving these considerations aside, however. and assessed solely on child-entertainment value and material return for money, many still failed to provide a satisfactory service. performance or gift. We are disturbed by the number of really unsuitable Santas, and we think that if you feel compelled to in- dulge your children in this manner you should restrict your choice to the half dozen less conspicuously disastrous ones, which we rank in the following order . .
Three guineas to Martin Fagg:
.. but the "Best Buy" is undoubtedly "Tip- perary Mick", now working at Harridges.., Long years on multifarious building sites have, it is true, imparted a touch of crudity to his technique and there is no disguising the fact that there is, particularly after luncheon, more than a hint of brown ale in the somewhat moist kisses that he plants so prolifically on the rosy cheeks of his infant clients. The gifts he dispenses are, moreover, not entirely unexceptionable. Plastic lepre- chauns are not, frankly, every child's mug of cocoa, and few parents, one imagines, would regard grubby old copies of The Sporting Life as adequate or indeed suitable substitutes for the lackanory Annual. Of what, therefore, does his appeal consist? The answer lies in one word: terror. Capable as he is of intimidating the most fractious, captious or querulous of tots ...'
Honourable mentions to T. Griffiths, W. D. Gilmour, Margaret Cash and Elsie Moody, and three guineas each to Russell Lucas:
llarridges: Impressive rotundity, credible Haltic-Balham accent, firm handshake, peppermint breath and nice Blyton humour. Whiskers indifferent and untypical brunette eves. Good buy.
'Self ords:. Skinny, transatlantic voice, bari- tone laugh, whisky and aftershave smell, Thurberesque charm with sound snowflake beard and ice-blue tundra eyes. For the more mature three-year olds.
'Nana & Amy's Stores: Fat, wheezy, cockney and risque. Mothballs and tobacco perfume, tired whiskers but percentive with unusual line of whimsy. Blue eyes marred by NHS spectacles. Keeps the Mums giggling' and Brian Allgar: 'Armed with a random sample of small chil- dren, a team of Which? investigators set out to test the current crop of Fathers Christmas. Prices ranged from Is (Fleecevalue's) to half- a-guinea (Horrids), while gifts included a cracked ping-pong ball (Fleecevalue's) and a device for removing packed ice from skis (Horrids). The Santas themselves were a mixed bunch; we were not convinced that inebriation is a valid substitute for traditional jollity, and several of the products tested were disqualified for swearing, our "best buy" was at Selfish's. where for 3s 6d the resident Santa provided four hearty chuckles, a pat on the he^d, an amnle if somewhat mildewed set of whiskers, and a cardboard cut-out model of the war in Vietnam.'
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