In Competition No. 3325 you were invited to describe an encounter between Bertie Wooster and James Bond in the style of P.G. Wodehouse.

The seed for this popular challenge was Ben Schott’s much-praised 2018 homage to P.G. Wodehouse, Jeeves and the King of Clubs, in which Jeeves and Wooster enter into the world of international espionage. A second instalment, Jeeves and the Leap of Faith, was labelled ‘pastiche-perfect’ by the TLS. As well as being a testament to Schott’s skill, their success bears out what Evelyn Waugh said about Wodehouse: ‘Mr Wodehouse’s idyllic world can never stale. He will continue to release future generations from captivity that may be more irksome than our own.’ Commendations, in a hotly contested week, go to Sarah Drury, D.A. Prince and David Silverman. The winners, printed below, snaffle £30.

‘Nasty little chaps those piranhas, Jeeves.’

‘Indeed, sir, they are not the most friendly of fish.’

‘And it’s a good job you arrived in the nick of time. We Woosters aren’t easily rattled, but those fish did the trick.’

‘That is perfectly understandable, sir.’

‘Who’d have thought little fish could be so unpleasant? I’ll never look at whitebait in the same way again.’

‘Will there be anything else, sir?’

‘Just one thing. That chap Blofeld – I had my doubts from the start – when he saw you, he said, “So we meet again, Mr Something.” I didn’t quite catch the name.’

‘Before I became a gentleman’s gentleman, sir, I followed a less exacting profession. I encountered Mr Blofeld at a time when prudence required that I assume a different cognomen.’

‘An alias, eh? What was it?’

‘As I recall, sir, it was Bond. James Bond.’

George Simmers

‘I was sent by the agency, sir,’ said the steely-eyed specimen intimidating my doorway. The chap prowled in like the offspring of a jaguar and a particularly sharpish razor blade. I swear I heard the carpet sigh in a sort of ecstasy, as if he’d electrified the Persian silk pile.

‘Bond, James Bond,’ he introduced himself. ‘007.’

That rummy nickname couldn’t be his IQ. This was the strong silent type, chock-full of cool judgment and quick reflexes. As Shakespeare put it, a bally noble, godlike, bullet-chewing Johnnie. Obviously firing on all four cylinders, unlike B. Wooster. A chap can overdo the Green Swizzles, and the old onion throbbed feebly.

‘Drink this,’ he said, producing a vigorously shaken martini. I did, and staggered sideways. This Bond could give Roderick Spode a jolly good trouncing, and go head-to-head with Aunt Agatha. He might even win, and she is licensed to kill.

Janine Beacham

‘Bond, James Bond, what? The old Wooster skull has had the moniker drummed into it for years, usually by the cove himself. For a doyen of the hush-hush, the fellow was loose as jam, all Windsor knots, fussy drinks orders and souped-up jalopies. Jeeves, needless to say, approved. Happiest on the Riviera where girls could flock to him like Aunts to the Market Snodsbury tombola, Bond was more odd fish than good egg at the Drones: a chap had only to administer a clubbable elbow to that rock-hard ribcage and out would spring Bond’s revolver and mitigating licence to kill. Yours truly asked to borrow said licence on account of the course of true love running choppier than forecast and so forth. Bond’s eyebrow arched like the proverbial proscenium and I received the shortest shrift since I proposed Wooster, Bertram Wooster, as a potential double-oh-thingummy for British spookdom.

Adrian Fry

It sometimes happens that a bloke fetches up during one’s private cogitations without so much as a carte de visite, insisting on a chinwag. One is busy resting a while in a desolate place, or else testing roly-poly at the Drones, when enter from the wings some cove desperate to shoot some b. So with James Bond. Eschewing him was indubitably out of the q., so embracing duly followed. ‘Wooster,’ he remarked, as nonchalantly as an aunt who has partaken of a large Green Swizzle, ‘have you considered working for foreign intelligence?’

Either he was laying on compliments with the proverbial finishing trowel, or suggesting I had taken the Kaiser’s pfennig. I considered administering a lethal haymaker, when I noticed a grin playing cadenzas upon his cruel lips. When a fellow craves a boon, one resists at peril. This is how I came to kill his old chum, E.S. Blofeld.

Bill Greenwell

As a kid I recall reading a poem about some bloke who was, if memory serves me right, alone and palely loitering and that summed up this cove exactly. I sallied forth and confronted him.

‘Ho there, shady loiterer!’ I cried. ‘Pray state your business.’

‘My name’s Bond. I’m looking for someone called Wooster.’ His smile was not unlike that of the Assyrian contemplating an unprovoked assault on the fold.

‘At your service,’ I replied, unleashing the teeth and courteously extending the mitten. Next thing, I was up against the wall with my arm twisted behind my back.

‘Hey!’ I yipped, a bead of persp bedewing the old brow. ‘Stop that!’

Which he absolutely did, without a murmur. Bewildered, I turned to see my assailant stretched senseless upon the ground and Jeeves returning a small but serviceable rubber bludgeon to his pocket.

‘I conceived you might require some assistance, sir.’

J.C.H. Mounsey

No. 3328: Double time

You are invited to submit a poem on a topical theme in which the last two words of each line rhyme. Please email entries of up to 16 lines to lucy@spectator.co.uk by midday on 29 November.