In Competition No. 3291, you were invited to provide a profile of a well-known person in which their qualities are compared to items of food or drink.

A commendation to Chris O’Carroll for his gastronomical portrait of Jeremy Clarkson – ‘…the scorching sarcasm he deploys in lieu of wit manages to combine the sadistic fire of Ghost Peppers, Carolina Reapers and the like with the sorry shapelessness of a bland swede mash or a gummy tangle of damp pasta…’ – and £25 to the winners.

Mr Lee Anderson is a giant cock-on-a-stick, Goose Fair’s abiding sweet treat, a sticky Nottinghamshire delicacy with a bit of bite – not something to chew over, more something ready to snap. In mellower moods, he is one of Nature’s Stilton cheeses – smooth and creamy, streaked with blue after he’s been needled, just a little bit nutty, outwardly rather crusty, a lovely old-fashioned taste, a traditional big cheese not suitable for vegetarians. Some have suggested he is like a lovely Midland pork pie, specifically a Gooseberry Pork Pie, with that sharp tang in the delightful way of the general impression of pig, with stout pastry and unquivering jelly. Eat him with a blunt knife. Bring him to your lips as often as you like, but you won’t find him in a food bank. And hang recipes! If you had a few more coppers, you could make him from scratch.

Bill Greenwell

Nicola Sturgeon’s sanctity was cold porridge to Boris Johnson’s coco-pops and Baileys; her virtue square as Lorne sausage after Alex Salmond’s battered chipolata. Her independence manifesto was delicious as a Burns Night haggis if you could stomach the unmentionables. She aerated the Scottish economy into public sector cranachan: homeopathic quantities of Moray oats and Tayside raspberries whipped up with gallons of Barnett-formula cream milked from the English taxpayer, served with the peaty smirk of a 50-year-old Laphroaig. Her fighting fund evaporated like the angels’ share, her ferries were buoyant and plentiful as the peel in Dundee marmalade, and the mouths of her party sewn up like fish-gobs in a pan of crappit heid. Though her ministry had the qualities of an Arbroath smokie – pungent, whiter-than-white and with indefinite shelf life – she vanished from Holyrood like the last piece of shortbread at a Barlinnie coffee morning.

Nick MacKinnon

To say that Liz Truss is smooth on the palate would be misleading. Were she a carafe of wine, the flavour would be sharp, with a hint of vinegar. Indeed, some loyal colleagues have identified a lingering, bitter aftertaste. The flat, windswept reaches of the Norfolk landscape cannot produce the seductive sweetness of the grape varieties nurtured in the vineyards of southern France. But Liz, of course, would be the first to reject all things European.

This wine is, perhaps, an acquired taste, offering food-pairing opportunities: with pork and cheese, for instance. But be warned. It has a limited shelf life, not one to be laid up for future consumption. Also be aware of the price tag: it will make a considerable hole in your finances – and those of the whole population, as it happens.

Not recommended as an addition to your wine list. Once tasted, never forgotten.

Sylvia Fairley

Though the overripe fruitiness of Nigel Farage’s public persona may induce visions of homely, essentially British apple crumble or stewed plums (with or without custard as you please – Nigel defends your right to choose), the man is a protean sophisticate, not a common or garden nativist. The prop that accompanies his platform lecture may be a tankard of ale or a glass of Bordeaux. His very name announces a cultural ambivalence which gastronomically might be compared to a mélange of familiar and continental ingredients (he does, however, exclude the more exotic foodstuffs from the mix).

Normally urbane beneath a coating of sauce piquante, to some he is simply a fruitcake, to others repellent as a jellied eel – but Remainers can be choked by the vinegar of his demagogic anger. Many have noted his resemblance to a frog. Does he actually eat frogs’ legs? The jury’s out on that one.

Basil Ransome-Davies

Lee Anderson is a meat and taters Tory. If the meat is English beef, tough as old pit boots and the homegrown potatoes are boiled hard as his passage through life, at least the repast will last long enough that you’ll not want afters. Like a Nottinghamshire ale, Anderson has a thick head, a strong flavour and an especially bitter finish if you’re after anything but terse injunctions to self-reliance. With opinions vindaloo hot, favour is the only thing Anderson won’t curry. Bony as bargain bass from an end-of-day fishmonger, Anderson subjects the soft porcine underbelly of received liberal opinion to his flame-grill of common sense. Boiled eggs to penal codes, Anderson despises all things soft, experience as single parent and Citizens Advice volunteer having taught that good eggs end only as omelettes. If it’s enterprise, not excrement, you’re wanting to produce, Anderson’s itching to add the needful sauce: hunger.

Adrian Fry

Though he has much in common with the languid indifference of Crème du Barry (that last-choice option on a tired and outdated menu) and the lacking-in-character blandness of Blanquette de Veau, Jacob Rees-Mogg would wince at French comparisons, as if traditional English dishes were being sidelined in favour of some pseudo-European pretension. But his is not the robust muscularity of rare roast beef, the earthy flavour of blood pudding, the vigour of well-hung game: all of these have an energy which sits ill with his sprawling insouciance. In this we see something closer to mashed swede or a collation of nursery foods, those childhood comforts that competent adults outgrow but which in some men remain seductive long into adulthood. The pallor of white bread, the teatime treat of butter-drenched crumpet which offers nothing of texture or titillation of the taste buds; above all, that epitome of emptiness: junket.

D.A. Prince

No. 3294: vegetarian

You are invited to provide the first 16 lines of an ode to a turnip or another similarly unglamorous vegetable. Email entries to lucy@spectator.co.uk by midday on 5 April.