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Cleri Who's Who
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Four lines rhyming AABB - scansion, rhythm, metre and all that malarkey is as random as-u-like. Oh yes - the featured subject, usually a person, is mentioned in the first line.
Here's a full and frank(ly better) intro by Thos along with some that were made earlier.
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Julius Henry Marx
Amused us with his larks
While George Bernard Shaw
Was rather more of a bore.
Jeremy John Durham Ashdown
Often pictured with a frown
Not becoming Prime Minister must have been a bit annoying
But he made up for the disappointment with his quasi-military envoying.
Simon Phillip Hugh Francis Neil Callow
Has achieved the unlikely feat of making reality TV even more shallow
In bold, obviously
Openly gay and acts the part
Wherever do his talents start?
Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde
Comitted buggery and was then reviled
He started his days within the Pale
But was later found guilty in a court of law, convicted, and sent to jail.
Harry S. Truman
Was human, all too human
He insisted the S was a name and shouldn't have a period after it, but wrote the period in his own signature himself
Perhaps this was a conscious attempt at irony, but he also ran the camp canteen at Ft. Still and it's entirely possible he just snitched one too many bottles off the shelf.
Jaramogi Oginga Odinga
Was the Octogenerian of Kenyan politics.
For African democracy, he was a key thinker ABAB then?
Although his sense of rhyme often went for six.
Edmund Clerihew Bentley why not?
Never treated scansion particularly gently
Rhyme and coherence, though, were the sine qua non
'Tis a pity we sometimes get it wrong. ;-)
Patrick Edmund Pery, the Earl of Limerick
Was considered by The Sun a big Tory stick
While Edward (middle name unknown) Lear, the original Limerick King
Was a much less political thing
Masaoka Shiki
May have been chosen for this clerihew because to the average Westerner, unversed in Japanese pronunciation, rhyming his surname doesn't seem too tricky
Unlike, say, the common Japanese name Kinoshita
Which apparently rhymes with Peter
U Thant
Has done something that many men can't
But apparently he only had one name
His other, Pantanaw, having been discarded when he achieved, as General Secretary of the United Nations, diplomatic fame
rab Is that allowable as the start of a clerihew?
Why not him at the start of clerhew; we'll take a stab
Of course, we can't promise anything stellar
But he is a remarkable feller.
Tuj Yes, it's allowable
Of whom we are all the judge
Now stands on trial
For casting a shadow, thereby blocking the public's ability to make use of the park sun-dial.
penelope curses, caught again
Likes to see how things developpy
Whereas flerdle
Prefers to let things curdle oblig, Nowt personal :o)
Chalky rolling on
Lost her doorkey
While she normally keeps it in a jar made of china,
The frail vessel cracked, and now the thing might be anywhere from Cannes to Carolina
Darren NO-ONE is safe
Once hiked the Kalahari, which as everyone knows, is very barren
Fortunately, the local tribesmen explained how water may be found
Underground
Rosie (in that case)
Has a cherished prize posession- a tatted Victorian tea cosy
He wears it on his head
While checking the weather from his shed.
Software
Dare
Says I Say, Potter!
Well, at least he oughtta. Dubious pronunciation to fit whether or not that was a typo
Bill Gates (Chalky) How did you know that?
Mates
But Steve Jobs' not the apple of his eye
You won't find Bill gently stroking Steve's thigh
The inscrutable irach - [Rosie] Just a hunch
Is undoubtedly aware of Nobel Prize-winning physicist Paul Dirac (Chalky) Actually I haven't got a hat of any kind. :-)
But the one he really feels for
Is the misshapen form of Patrick Moore.
Niels Bohr
Was rotten to the core
A singular view, it must be said
Since his study on the way electrons orbit around the atomic core to a Nobel Prize led!
Michael Faraday
Made it a point to frequent at least one bar a day
His consumption of the odd pork scratching
Kept his ideas of electromagnetism hatching.
Dorothy Leigh Sayers
Baked a cake of many layers
One for each circle of hell, in fact, which meant that it was kind of flimsy [irach] You should have shown up an hour sooner :-)
Her pastry concoctions being known for their allegoric connotations, and not for their whimsy
Dara O'Briain
Dreams of being Brendan Behan
Excepting, perhaps, the manner of his death
And alcohol tainted breath
Linus Pauling
Whose intake of vitamin C was quite appalling
Though he lived to be a great old age
Nuclear tests filled him full of rage
Romulus, brother of Remus
Said to Scotty, "To Rome will you beam us"
Or at least, that's what Babelfish translated it to from the original Latin
Which means it's about as likely that Mars' sons wanted to go to Manhattan actually, I wish babel DID do latin translations...
New York City
Big, loud, glitzy, fast, exciting but probably not pretty
Whereas San Francisco
Has only one disco.
Pablo Neruda
Used to rewrite Gabriel Garcia Marquez' limericks in order to make them cruder
Whereas Thomas Bowdler, hardly a writer
Removed the less moral parts of the human body in order to make it lighter
Greyfriars Bobby
Had to find an appropriate place in the graveyard to do a little jobby
But Jennings
Searched for pfennings.
Managing Director of the IMF, Rodrigo de Rato y Figaredo
Whirls in and out of the office like a tornado
While Director-General of the WHO, Dr. Lee Jong-Wook
Just pops in now and then to borrow a book
William Morris
Was very fond of young Doris
However she
Was far too young for some pervy old 19th Century designer who was just too old for she.
I appreciate that was rubbish, but I had to get it out of my system.
Thelonious Sphere Monk
Botherer] ...as the author of The IT crowd should have said.
Not for him the crudities of Punk
His thunk was melodious
And he considered Punk Rock as wretched as Hell...odious
The good Saint Valentine
Had a hearty penchant for sipping too much red wine
So now we commemorate
Him by getting drunk while out on a date
Sir David Frost Bile, please
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