13 Jun 2026
issue 13 June 2026
Comments
Competition 3453 invited you to describe a new, infallible personal regime that promised to make one healthy, rich and irresistible. (Thanks to Frank Upton.) The crop was not vast but was full of inspiring ideas. Sue Pickard and D.A. Prince both attested to the benefits of rhubarb, while Paul Freeman recommended rabid flag-twirling. Joseph Houlihan’s Burn ’Em with Burnham© programme deserves a mention, as does Basil Ransome-Davies’s Planetary Absolutely New Infinite Church. The prizes go to those below.
Only subscribe to my exclusive regime derived from the wisdom of the Victorian sensation novel and you will become wealthy, healthy and (temporarily if frequently) wed. My step-by-step instructions on the concealment, alteration and obfuscation of family wills will make you Master of the nefariously interpolated codicil. Romantic success will be simply achieved by your fortuitously holidaying at one of my recommended Mitteleuropean spa resorts, where nervously excited or tubercular heiresses daily quiver in readiness for a swift nuptial union. To see you stay in peak physical condition throughout your campaign, I will vouchsafe to you precisely that proportion of stiff if false rectitude of bearing and flintiness of temperamental outburst required to guarantee a workout for your musculoskeletal and cardiovascular systems sufficient to leave you more than equal to sequestering successive wives from the delights of the marital bed to the remotest barred cell of a private lunatic asylum.
