This is a prose tale about the great superhero, SNOGGO
(as told in the first person by SNOGGO to his amanuensis, Edna)

*'You can't have "Jew",' I said.
'Why not? It's a perfectly good word. Are you anti-semitic or something?'
'Jew has a capital J,' I said.
'Not necessarily. I've used it before.'
'Not with me you haven't. There's the dictionary. Look it up.'

Jumbo grudgingly picked up the Shorter Oxford and looked up "Jew". He sniffed loudly, slammed the dictionary shut and removed the tiles from the board. His replacement word was a sodding disaster.

'That's twenty-four points you've cost me with your nit-picking, you *******,' he said through gritted yellow teeth, his flabby body shaking with rage. 'The J was on a triple letter score.'

I sneered derisively and laughed long and loud, making Jumbo froth at his ugly fat nostrils with anger.

'Watch this and weep, Jumbo,' I said, playing out all seven of my tiles onto the board to create a stunning word: UNZIPPED. 'The Z's on a double letter score and it's all on a triple word score, so that's 90, plus 50 for playing all my tiles, 140 in total and the end of the game,' I declared in triumph. Jumbo was caught with 14 in his hand (remember: he still had the J) and thus I, the great SNOGGO, became Greenwich Scrabble Champion for the 25th year running. Not only that: but 25 consecutive defeats in the final for Jumbo.

Jumbo roared in frustration as he saw his hopes of taking the coveted 24ct gold "Queen Anne" cup away from me, SNOGGO, dashed to the ground yet again. And, by centuries old tradition, 25 consecutive victories meant the priceless cup was now mine to keep for ever. Jumbo's scream of uncontrollable, incandescent rage could have been heard as far away as the Vanbrugh Hill Municipal Waste Disposal Centre.

'******* you for all ******* eternity,' he bellowed unsportingly as he waddled out of the cheering hall. In so doing he flouted the gentlemen's convention of always staying to take part in the closing ceremony. He missed seeing me, the great SNOGGO, receive the shining gold cup from the gnarled hands of the Lady Mayoress, the Hon. Mrs Snotte-Wragge, who whispered in my ear 'Fancy a quick **** later, back at the mayoral parlour, SNOGGO dear?' For the fifth year in a row I told her to go and get stuffed as I didn't go for ugly old bats with arses on them like a double-decker bus.

Later that evening, as I sat in the splendid Georgian surroundings of Snoggo Manor, cradling the gold cup and admiring the row of 25 Championship certificates on the walls of my elegant dining room, finishing off my second bottle of Bollinger Grand Cru '89 and stuffing my 18th oyster down my happy throat, I heard a knock on the door. Who could that possibly be at nearly midnight?

It was Jumbo, my fat defeated foe. He looked downcast. 'SNOGGO,' he said, 'I've come to offer my apologies for my inappropriate behaviour earlier. You deserved to win, you are the finest scrabbler in all of Greenwich. I have come to offer you the hand of friendship and to invite you to my humble home for a midnight snack to celebrate your stirring victory.'

'Jumbo,' I replied, 'that's uncommon civil of you, old man. And your timing is excellent, as I've just finished my apéritif and was on the verge of kicking Mrs SNOGGO, my new 17-year old Thai mail order wife, out of her hammock to make my supper. So what's on the menu, squire?'

'Well,' said Jumbo, 'I was thinking of pâte de foie gras - naturally made by Mrs Jumbo using our own force-fed geese, with a bottle of Château d'Yquem '78 to start with. Then perhaps a kilo of blood-red filet mignon avec pommes frites, washed down with a rather good magnum of Brouilly '99. Then there's Mrs Jumbo's famed cheeseboard with a tumbler full of vintage port, followed by a dozen crêpes suzettes, a few petits cafés, a monster Armagnac and a giant Havana each.'

I considered the proposed menu carefully before replying. 'Sounds quite good to me, Jumbo,' I declared, glancing over his shoulder at the Bentley waiting outside. I could just see the peaked chauffeur's cap of the diminutive Mrs Jumbo peering myopically over the leather-covered steering wheel.

And so, having told Mrs Snoggo to tidy up a bit whilst I was out, I went off to dinner with Jumbo. In all our 25 years of Scrabble rivalry I had never once set foot into his house, so I was eager to check out what sort of lifestyle he enjoyed. Once inside Jumbo Villa, I cast my eyes over the luxurious furnishings with an expert eye, evaluating their immense worth and rarity with incredible perspicacity and knowledge.

'Not a bad pad you've got here, Jumbo,' I conceded. 'Not in the same class as Snoggo Manor, of course, but still ****** impressive.' He was visibly flattered by my compliment.

'A glass of sherry while we wait for Mrs Jumbo to serve us?' queried Jumbo jovially. I sniffed at the huge portion of delicious amber nectar appreciatively. 'Lustau Amoroso Bodega Marquès de Mierda '42?' I guessed instinctively. Jumbo nodded. '******* spot on, SNOGGO,' he admitted in stunned amazement.

I took an enormous gulp and felt the alcohol hit me like a slam in the abdomen from Cassius Clay's butcher and more vicious brother. The room spun and I closed my eyes in resigned delight.

When I came to I found myself hanging unclothed in chains on the wall of a dank cellar. My head was pounding and I felt distinctly below par. I looked over my shoulder and beheld Jumbo standing there with a sjambok in his hand. He was stark ******* naked, naked as the day he was born, and I have never seen anything so repulsive in all my life (with the sole exception of that incredible day when, as a child, I caught my paternal grandparents bonking on the Persian rug in the Great Hall at Snoggo Manor on Christmas Eve). Jumbo’s huge pendulous ******* sagged over his bloated fat belly, which itself hung so low his genitals were mercifully hidden from my view. He was a ******* monstrosity.

The tiny Mrs Jumbo stood to the rear of the cellar, also naked, pallid and with her public hair died a shocking pink. She was a skinny freak, a vision of *** Hell. I noticed the tattoo on her belly. It showed a depiction of the crucifixion which I felt was in dubious taste, especially with Jesus sporting an enormous *******.

What I, the wonderful SNOGGO, suffered in the next few hours was truly indescribable, so I will only summarise it. After a seemingly endless whipping from Jumbo (assisted by Mrs Jumbo, but her puny lash strokes were almost pleasurable), accompanied by their combined frenzied cries of demented hatred and loathing, I was forced to suffer the supreme humiliation. Jumbo mounted a set of fine Regency library steps, positioned his Hellish lumpen body behind me and unceremoniously inserted his tiny ***** into my outraged ****. Oh the shame! Oh the shame!

‘O Jesus Christ help me!’ I yelled in rain and pain. And suddenly a voice spoke unto me. 'O great SNOGGO,' it intoned, 'thou needst not suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune so needlessly. Only have faith in me, the great loving Jesus, and I shall give thee strength to deal with thy ******* awful tribulations.'

It was a miracle! SNOGGO could and would be saved! Quickly I mumbled a couple of Ave Marias remembered from my youth as a leading mutual masturbator in the chapel choir, and I silently promised a quick twenty thousand quid to the local faggotty priest ******* fund, and my chains fell to the floor with a blast of heavenly thunder. Halle-*******-luliah!

'Right, Jumbo you fat ****,' I snapped, 'you have ******* had it.'

And with one mighty blow of my right arm I smashed him against the wall. His huge hideous body crumpled as he slid to the floor, blood oozing from his fat gob. I gave him a ****** good kicking in the face and in the heart region and shortly he went to meet his maker, with a sickening grunt and expulsion of *****.

Then I turned to the horrified naked ugly skinny tattooed Mrs Jumbo and said: 'OK, *******, where's my ******* supper?'

She shrugged and headed upstairs to prepare the meal I had been promised by Jumbo earlier, as I was seriously hungry by this stage. Little did she know I would be obliged to put her out of her misery later. Or if she were lucky, I might offer her a position as unpaid toilet cleanser chez moi.

Yes, it was yet another stunning victory for the fabulous SNOGGO, thanks to timely divine intervention for which I am very much obliged.

And don't forget my luscious 17-year old Thai mail bride would be waiting to give me a really good ******* once I got back to Snoggo Manor. Either that or I would give her a good belting and send her back to her grotty poverty-stricken village with a demand for a full refund, chop chop.

This is one of Barry Hodges "Memories" poems.

*O how I recall with sadness in my poor forsaken heart
How I lost my fat-arsed sister (though she was a silly ****);
We had just enjoyed a meal on the esplanade at Taormina
(soup, spaghetti alla vongole followed by some tasty semolina)
So we went for a digestive walk through the Sicilian hills
Not realising we were in for some awful shocks and spills.

There came a mighty roar and a dreadful smell of sulphur
(even worse than flatulence or a burp caused by little Maria's peptic ulcer)
Oh dear, oh dear, Mount Etna had just violently erupted
With lava bursting out, from the bowels of earth rudely eructed,
And with a sickening splodge a fiery lump landed on the hapless bird
Causing her to die forthwith, screaming louder than I'd ever heard.

God in his mysterious ways is supposed to show us his mighty wonders
But occasionally I do believe he quite clearly makes some ******* blunders;
And I really think it's quite unfair to cause a volcano to blow up
Especially since it looked a nice mountain for bold climbers to go up;
But it's an ill wind that blows no one any good has always been my motto
So I emptied Maria's scorched purse, went to a bar and got quite blotto.

This is a beautiful "Barry Hodges" poem.*

Ah, sweet memories of that night in Blarney
In the stout-soaked suburbs of ould Cork City.
How clearly through the mist of alcoholic memory
I recall how we all piled out of Johnny's bar at closing time
****** as a load of proverbial ******* newts;
'Where to now me boys, which bar's still open?'
Shrieked spiflicated Sean O'Shannon
(that's notorious sixteen pints an hour Sean,
the man who won Strictly Come Boozing twice)
As he tottered over to his Pa's new BMW convertible,
Lucky ****** that he is to be son to a Fianna Fáil MEP,
And one not adverse to trousering a Euro or two.

'Sean, me oul' potato, de ye think ye should be driving
With that record-breakin' skinful o' stout
I just seen you put away down your greasy gullet,
Not to mention the quadruple whiskey chaser?'
Enquired loopy Liam O'Lephrechaun as he leaned over
And puked up another gallon of warmish Guinness
Over yours truly as I rolled helplessly in the Ballygrohan road
To the amusement of the gawping bystanders,
Bearing in mind there were a good dozen gobbets
Of half-digested pork scratchings in the froth
Which was causing havoc with my apparel.

So without another feckin' word being spoken
My dear drinking companions and ***** buddies
Left me prostrate and clambered gaily into the waiting car
And roared off into the enchanted Gaelic night;
Singing and smoking themselves silly simultaneously,
So full of the joys of life and the blessed bottle.
And then some ****** stupid American tourist
(doubtless dressed in hideous checked golfing trousers
with a backwards-facing baseball cap on his ugly head,
not to forget his overweight wifey crammed into the front seat
just like a huge white bloated fat-faced hippo),
Came round the next corner in a clapped out rental car
And the two of them got sent to Kingdom-sodding-Come
With a terrible metallic crash which destroyed them completely.

'Oh begorrah and *******, would ye just look at the mess
The feckin eejit's made of me Daddy's Beemer,
And it's his pride and joy so it is to be sure!'
Cried Sean O'Shannon in an alcoholic rage,
As he contemplated the largest insurance claim
In the County Cork for the past six decades,
(at least the largest legitimate one anyway).
Whilst I was trying to get my hipster pants down
To avoid filling them up with beery diarrhoea
Brought on by my involuntary bursts of joyous mirth,
(bejasus, 'twas the second time in the space of a single week
and my new girlfriend was getting a bit fussy about hygiene
bearing in mind she was thinking of taking the veil).

How fortunate old Father Tucker and Garda Sergeant O'Toole
Could both (when they'd sobered up sufficiently)
Testify later from their secure vantage point
In the rear compartment of a nearby parked hearse,
(where they were having a ******* with Deidre,
the filthiest wee **** in the whole South-Western counties)
That the accident was not dear Sean's fault at all, to be sure,
As the other stupid sober yankee ****** was driving at 75
On the wrong friggin' side of the ******' street
Or probably in the middle, come to think of it.
'Sure but Sean's the best driver this side of the Blarney Stone,
And there's no way himself would ever drive under the influence'*
They agreed sagely before going off for another jar or two
And maybe a double knee-trembler with Deidre's fat sister,
One up each of her gaping hair-rimmed orifices.

I've  spent a really miserable month.
I told the wife we'd go out to a nice restaurant
On her fiftieth birthday,
Which naturally led to happy anticipation.
So, the evening before she asked me,
"Where are you going to take me on my birthday, dear?"
And I replied, quick as a flash, "Up the *******."

The silly ***** seemed to have suffered
A major sense of humour failure;
Surely my prezzie would be a sure fire winner,
Certain to restore bonking privileges.
But when she unwrapped it and saw
A giant green ****-plug to get her in the mood,
She turned quite nasty on me, to put it mildly.
So I slapped her one in the ******* kisser.

What does nineteen sixty nine mean to you?
The last dying tremor of the swinging sixties,
Woodstock and exotic moon landings,
Empty-headed teenagers and wasted hippies
Dancing in the fading glimmer of youth,
Their painted beads perished in the sun?

Or maybe you weren't even born then
And all you know is a tatty documentary film
About a media-created pop music fest,
And some footage of silver-shining Michelin men
Jumping about in lunar zero gravity,
(Which malicious rumour has it was faked -
Anything to distract the American public from
The inevitable national humiliation in Vietnam).

So let me remind you how it really, really was:
Swinging London was rocking like crazy,
Wow, it was so cool, the groovy discos served
Delicious lukewarm coca-cola after eleven p.m.,
And trendy Britain was a cute place to be gay
With homosexuality finally legalised
After a century of puritanical persecution,
Except that the law reform didn't apply in
Scotland or Northern Ireland or to the armed forces
And you had to be twenty-one and you could only do it
In private and if no third person was there.
And theatrical censorship was still in force
Which meant all naughty plays were blue-pencilled
By bureaucrats and narrow-minded prigs.

So let me remind you how it really, really was:
Religious riots in Belfast, Franco still in power in Spain,
And you could go there for a cheapo sunshine holiday
With watered down sangria in the shade of a bayonet;
The Berlin Wall an unchallenged affront to human decency,
Thanks to old man Kosygin in absolute power in the Kremlin,
His iron rule in force throughout Eastern Europe,
Poor Prague's defeat emphasised by occupying Soviet tanks.
And lovely Greece, birthplace of democracy, home to Zorba's dance
(Except that it was a criminal offence under the Colonels
To play any of Theodorakis' music because the most famous Greek
Was condemned as a ******* communist revolutionary *******).

So, let me remind you how it really, really was:
Nixon in the White House, half a million American troops
Fighting a losing battle for democracy in Vietnam
(More accurately against democracy, but the jury is still out on that),
And nearly as many US citizens on the march against the war.
Whilst the rest of the world looked on in indifference,
Since they had had enough common sense to stay out of it.
And when we think back to such a terrible, terrible year,
All the media seems to tell us is the insipid lie
That nineteen sixty-nine was a lovely summer of love.
It wasn't like that, it was boring and provincial and I was there.

God was tired that day
After all
Six days shalt thou labour
And on the seventh
Shalt thou rest
And he'd be slaving away
For eighteen days nonstop
Mainly because of the offer of
Double overtime
Had proven irresistible.

He'd written out these great rules
On how to live,
All eleven of them.
And God yelled out:
"Oy Moses, you fat bearded ***,
I got some tablets of stone for you
So move your ******* kosher ****".

And Moses came out of the pub
And picked up the first ten
But, being a bit the worse for wear,
And nine sheets to the wind
With cut-price passover wine,
He never noticed the eleventh one:
"Never accept a personal cheque
Without a bank guarantee card"
Is what it said,
And you can't argue with that
No ******* way.

Many people worry about their weight
In case it stops them ever getting a date
But gaining a few odd pounds is nothing
Just the result of a few days' greedy scoffing.

It's when you gain a couple of stones+,
And oozing fat smothers all your aching bones,
When your butts squelch against each other
Then you know you are a big fat mother.

But the cure for this is but a simple job:
You wire a padlock o'er your greedy gob.
Take daily laxatives and have no fear:
All will be relieved by constant diarrhoea.