Bugger Bognor by rokkitnite

"Cos it’s far better to die as a George the Fifth Than to live as a Richard the Third" Why is Dick the Bad your paragon of bland living, Tim? Emerge victorious from bloody battles, see off the Scots, uphold higher education, seize the crown, kill off your nephews and get hacked to death in the prime of your life, charging at your hated enemy after skewering his standard bearer? As opposed to the high-stakes adrenaline rollercoaster of dying from a wheezy chest? I guess I'm missing the point somewhere, but it kind of reads like you're going for a 'Let Me Die a Young Man's Death' sentiment, which doesn't gel with your naming the poem after the curmudgeonly mutterings of an ill man.

Though the poem starts strongly (the death banter is really cool)with punchy lines, I can't help feeling it goes on too long, mainly, I'm guessing, because it's a piece you've written specifically for performance. I think it's a case of too many ideas, many of them conflicting. Being someone who took Geography rather than History, I had to wait for J's Richard III summmary to comment on the historical references, but yeah, it does leave you confused as to those final two lines hen the supposedly dull life is lived by someone who rampaged about like your regular warmongering fruitloop. Considered ending it after the third "Bugger Bognor"?

Ha! I really liked that. I think that's all from me...

Paul's nailed it. The last couplet was supposed to be rhyming slang. But I don't think that many people get it so I'm going to change it - my current, corrigible replacement lines are: 'For I may say these words again But not like this O not like this' This really is a performance piece - I don't think it has much hope of working on the page, partly because it relies on an intro explaining the dual, somewhat estranged premises, and partly because I wanted to write a warm-up poem. The idea is that I get the crowd to shout the 'Bugger Bognor!' lines. The first part is about the Hypothetical Bus that people wield as a kind of vehicular bogey man: 'Come on mate, you might get hit by a bus tomorrow!' The second bit is about George V's apocryphal last words after his physician told him that when he got better he could go to his favourite resort, Bognor. I agree that the Grim Reaper's a pretty stock character (I haven't seen the Boosh episode but I'll take your word for it) but this isn't high literature - I don't mind as long as the audience laughs. If they don't, I'll cut it. It's a first draft, admittedly. I need some space from it and I'm going to try it out in performance next month. (I considered doing it this weekend but decided that'd be a blunderous idea) I just wanted something ranty and silly that gets the audience shouting, so I can stick in some gentler material afterwards.

I didn't really think this worked. I didn't find the death character, or the associated imagery, very striking. And the naming of the towns section feels lazy. Also, there's something irritating, to me, about the phrase bugger bagnor. It's a kind of end-of-the-pier style joke but not sufficiently ironic here. And I'm not sure the conceit is really very engaging - even when you take the idea forward and say: "we should be fearless because the buses are coming to get us" it still feels pretty dumb. Joe