Thanks very much to all those who participated in my limerick competition, via Twitter, the blog or the Facebook page. I wanted to keep it open, rather than dictating the first line, and that certainly resulted in a variety of subjects! 

The winners are:

 – Chazz Broadhurst, posting at twitmericks.com, who managed to craft a fine limerick around a Van Gogh pun:

Gaugin, in a pub in St. Cyr,
Asked Van Gogh if he wanted a beer ;
Vince said, with surprise
In his china-blue eyes –
“No, s’okay, I’ve just got one ‘ere.”

– @Roscoe_English, who submitted several good ones via Twitter – including this on Henry VIII’s dissident Lord Chancellor.

Poor Old Sir Thomas More

Failed having tried to ignore

The King’s pleas for divorce.

Using newly made laws

His head was soon on the floor.

And Regina Lusca, who sent this shocker via the Facebook page. Taking my suggestion that it was safer to stick to dead people, she turned it on its head with a grotesque limerick on the recently deceased Jimmy Savile’s alleged necrophilia, which is in many ways most closely reflects the bawdy tradition of the form!

When caught stuffing stiffs, Savile said,
‘I’ve always been fond of the dead;
What’s all the palaver?
It’s just a cadaver,
And corpses don’t even give head.’

Copies of There Was an Old Geezer Called Caesar for those three – I’ll be in touch to get addresses.

MT