Talent Contests and their Pitfalls

She had all the necessary items inventoried and prepared for the great day, up to and including the ukulele and the badminton racquets. I, of course, was more than prepared with the bee-keeper's hat, and the shin-pads polished to a lustre that had already dazzled several airline pilots and caused a certain amount of consternation to some orbiting astronauts.

Still, however, there was the matter of the cheese to resolve. She – as is her wont – had implied that the day would not go entirely to my satisfaction if she was presented with anything other than a decent segment of Cheshire, whilst I had – up until the moment she revealed the contents of the penalty clauses - had my heart set on a tasty wedge of Red Leicester.

However, that was all to come. First we had to get through the preliminary rounds. These local contests have come on apace since the days when an error-free waltz or a jar of home made chutney was enough to scoop the prize. These days, in these times of celebrity-driven culture and a seeming unending obsession by the viewing public and the TV channels to inundate us with more and more talent shows, it all means that the bar these days is set so much higher.

So, therefore, our re-enactment of the Battle of Crecy, featuring our home-made scones, a trained performing politician and a (admittedly somewhat historically-dubious) man-eating tiger, had spent several weeks in rehearsal and there was now a danger of us running out of politicians, or having the tiger die from a diet consisting mainly of prospective candidates for local party selection, before it even managed to get its jaws around the cabinet minister we had managed to lure down to his own constituency, on the day of the contest, with the promise of several plain brown envelopes and an eventual elevation to the peerage.

However, due to a mistake by the - apparently - rather short-sighted tiger, we were disqualified in the semi-finals. The final too had to be abandoned until a replacement judge could be found. They did not – though – blame the tiger, just wished it could have got to the MP first, before it satiated its appetite on the competition judge.