The Guardian has a piece on a nursery rhyme competition. The winner really
isn't bad...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,,1573737,00.html

Bogeyman Blair has the right ingredients for winning rhyme

Lucy Ward, social affairs correspondent
Tuesday   September 20, 2005
The Guardian 



Tony Blair: a modern-day bogeyman? Photo: Martin Argles
 
The tail-slicing farmer's wife and Muffet-scaring spider have been joined in
the panoply of brutal nursery rhyme figures by a new bogeyman - Tony Blair.

The prime minister is the star - or more accurately villain - of the winning
entry of a competition to create new nursery rhymes for the millennium.

The rhyme, which could make less politically-minded parents long for the
simple innocence of Mary and her little lamb, is an earnest ditty intended
to educate youngsters on the government's decision to take Britain to war in
Iraq. 
 
"Baker Tony's Pizza," victorious in the nationwide Time for a New Rhyme
contest run by the children's digital television channel Nick Jr, portrays
Mr Blair as a baker creating deceptively-attractive pizzas of dye and
sawdust that "made all the children cry".

The judges of the competition, who included the poet Michael Rosen and the
television presenter Lorraine Kelly, thought that the rhyme's "political
undertones" reflected the contemporary social criticism of many much older
verses familiar from the cradle or the playground.

Its author, Angela Martin, 57, said her inspiration had come from a "desire
to educate our children on the politics of the Iraq war in a light-hearted
fashion". 

Whether or not the rhyme is adopted by parents crooning their babies to
sleep or by skipping-rope jumpers in the playground remains to be seen.

However, alternative themes behind other entries to the competition were no
less serious: topics included the Pope's death, the pressures of working
parents, Jamie Oliver's school dinners campaign (the subject of 16% of
entries), the September 11 terrorist attacks and the Boxing Day tsunami.

Second prize in the contest was taken by a rhyme by Miriam Collins, 27,
called Computer Virus, reading succinctly: "My computer caught a virus,/ So
I tucked it up in bed/ and I gave it lots of medicine/ but now my PC's
dead!" 

The second runner-up, by Jayne Fletcher Tomlinson, 48, is an unchallenging
verse titled Bus, Train, Bike and Car which only highlights the powerful
plague-inspired grittiness of Ring a Ring o'Roses.

The competition's organisers hope the winners will follow in a powerful
tradition of nursery rhymes, which have long supplied a sometimes coded oral
history of key royal and political events.

Baker Tony's Pizza 

Baker Tony baked a pizza
very round and thin
He said he added olives
but he never put them in
The stuff that he had grated
and sprinkled on to please
was only yellow sawdust
although he called it cheese
The rich tomato topping
was nothing more than dye
so Baker Tony's pizza
made all the children cry

By Angela Martin, aged 57





Alison Croggon

Blog: http://theatrenotes.blogspot.com
Editor, Masthead:  http://masthead.net.au
Home page: http://alisoncroggon.com