I - The Challenge
SNOGGO looked down at his father as the brave old one-legged war hero lay in his hospital bed, recovering after a drunken tumble down four flights of stairs. SNOGGO patted his father’s weary old head affectionately.
‘How are you, Papa?’ he enquired solicitously, ‘Is the old stump playing up? The nurses tell me your broken arms are on the mend, although your juggling days are probably over.'
The eighty year old Colonel Snoggo opened his eyes and regarded his world-famous son wearily and explained that he feared he would not see the year out and that the one thing which would make him happy would be to see SNOGGO triumphant in the only field which mattered to him. All right, the Colonel was proud that his son was the most popular person in the world, that he had performed innumerable feats of valour on every continent (SNOGGO corrected his father on this point: ‘Never in Antarctica, Papa!’), that he had achieved astounding intellectual heights and that he was on first name terms with prime ministers, presidents and monarchs across the globe.
The Colonel had to speak loudly to be heard over the cheers of the crowds of SNOGGO’s ever-present fans outside the hospital. ‘What would make me happy before I shuffle off this mortal coil, dearest SNOGGO, would be to see you win the men’s singles at Wimbledon!’ he croaked.
‘But I can’t play tennis, dearest Papa!’ protested SNOGGO; but it was in vain because SNOGGO knew that he could not resist the challenge. He had only five months to become the greatest tennis player in the world. Starting from scratch. Or else his dear father would die broken-hearted. SNOGGO would do his best, but if the old boy snuffed it in advance, what the fuck.
II - The Plan
SNOGGO looked at his battle plan; it seemed foolproof. He checked his list of bullet points one last time and smiled in satisfaction at his own ingenuity and supreme intelligence:
a. Learn how to play tennis.
b. Blackmail the All-England Tennis Club into allowing entry to the tournament.
c. Design the world’s greatest tennis racquet.
d. Select 50 members from the SNOGGO fan club, teach them hypnotism and ventriloquism and form them into a fanatical team of tennis supporters (provisionally to be called the Snoggettes).
e. Become close personal friends with all the Wimbledon umpires and bribe them generously.
It would work! He grinned in anticipation of his victory and how happy his dear father would be to see his son, the wondrous SNOGGO, triumph at Wimbledon. Only four and a half months before the Wimbledon final - he would have to get weaving.
Learning tennis proved quite easy. SNOGGO’s natural talent and supreme physical fitness, combined with his penetrating intelligence, meant that he was a fine player within just a few weeks. His personal coaches, both former Wimbledon champions whose secret sexual peccadilloes meant they had no option but to teach SNOGGO all they knew or risk being outed as major perverts, were delighted with his progress. On SNOGGO’s instructions, they had concentrated on his serves – just as the pilots who flew the aircraft into the World Trade Centre had never needed to learn about take-offs and landings, only about pointing the things in the right direction, so all SNOGGO needed to know was how to deliver dynamite serves with staggering force and accuracy (the force being amplified by his secret weapon, the atomic powered Snoggo-Racquet); SNOGGO would not be wasting his time on lobs and rallies, oh no.
In all honesty, SNOGGO knew he was unlikely to be able to beat the dreary, simple-minded bores and eager-beaver athletes who had played tennis seven days a week for years on end, amassing huge amounts of folding green stuff in the process, without a little bit of help. This is where the Snoggettes and the bribery would come into play.
III - the Contest
A few short months later, the sun shone bright on South London as SNOGGO arrived at Wimbledon in his chauffeur-driven Rolls Royce to the roars of the adoring crowds. He stepped out of the hugely expensive car, clad in a fetching green velvet jumpsuit, wearing a bright purple cockade and tiara on his magnificent head. Several of his half-naked female servants followed behind him, carrying half a dozen Atomic Snoggo-Racquets in gold-encrusted Gucci sports bags. SNOGGO swanned into the stadium, smiling confidently, stopping only to throw a few dozen signed £5 notes to the crowd. The TV cameras whirred and SNOGGO knew his old papa would be watching in admiration.
A troupe of passing Carmelite nuns fell to their knees on the pavement as SNOGGO passed by, their prayers for his victory rising gloriously to the very heavens. “Ave SNOGGO, Ave SNOGGO!” they chanted deliriously.
In Round 1, SNOGGO was down to play against Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the former French champion, sadly past it nowadays and thus no real match for the great British hero – but it would be good training SNOGGO felt. SNOGGO shook hands with his opponent at the net and whispered in the Frenchman’s ear, ‘Vas te faire foutre chez les Grecs, espece de con’. The Frenchman reddened and SNOGGO knew Rousseau’s heart would be pounding with rage. The Snoggettes began chanting from the stands, ‘Rousseau est un con, Rousseau est un con’, until the umpire called for them to give the frog a bit of respect. Then Rousseau won the toss and served four double faults in a row.
It was SNOGGO’s turn to serve. He threw the ball gracefully into the air and smashed it with his Atomic Snoggo-Racquet. The ball hurtled over the net like a bolt of greased lightning and hit the Froggie bang on his protruding Gallic nose, breaking it in two places. The Frenchman’s screams of agony were terrible to hear and could clearly be heard over the crowd’s jeers of laughter as he was carried off on a stretcher and SNOGGO declared the winner by the laughing umpire.
The second round of the tournament saw SNOGGO facing a stiffer challenge: the number 20 seed, the incredibly tall Spanish player, Generalissimo Francisco Franco de Paella, well known stud and international playboy. But SNOGGO, after a bit of careful detective work, knew de Paella’s secret. ‘Hola, gran maricon’, he greeted the Spaniard and the Snoggettes led the crowd in a chorus of obscene homophobic insults in English and Spanish.
SNOGGO raised the Atomic Snoggo-Racquet and served with savage force, the ball narrowly missing the Spaniard’s knee, thudding into the boards at the side of the court (damaging them very severely). De Paella had been a lucky hombre: that ball would have lamed him for life as SNOGGO had hidden a piece of lead in it. Disappointed, SNOGGO double-faulted.
'Love-fifteen', called out the umpire in obvious chagrin.
'Kill him, SNOGGO!' sung out the Snoggettes cheerily.
'Maricon! Maricon! Maricon! Hijo de Puta!' chanted the spectators gaily.
SNOGGO’s next serve was a total scorcher, catching the Spaniard in the left eye. ‘Aaaaaaaaaaggghhhh!” he screamed, ‘Soy ciego, soy ciego! O mi mama!’ as he was led away from the court to the happy yells of the patriotic crowd. SNOGGO waved to the umpire who smiled broadly and pronounced the Spaniard disqualified for cowardice.
And so the rounds progressed: SNOGGO defeated the Italian champion, Dante Gabrielle Rossetti Mussolini de Ravioli, with a well placed gelignite serve to his stomach, followed by another ace to his balls. The Czech number 3 seed, Antonin Kafka-Dvorak, fell to SNOGGO in the quarter finals when, disconcerted by the Snoggettes’ concentrated hypnotic gaze of anti-Slavonic hatred, he failed to dodge SNOGGO's stupendous 200 mph service. The ball got him in the left ear, bursting the drum totally, causing him to bellow like a hippo being castrated for a good five minutes. Poor Kafka-Dvorak was obliged resign to immense crowd cheers of derision at his unbearable pain. (NOTE: He never played top-class tennis again and ended up a helpless alcoholic.)
The semi-final saw SNOGGO facing his greatest challenge to date, the reigning American champion, Martin Luther J.F.K. King III, twice Olympic gold medal winner and the runner-up for the previous three Wimbledons. SNOGGO shook the hirsute Afro-American’s hand warmly and informed him, sotto voce, that he was a mother-fucking cock-sucking faggot and that he, SNOGGO, had buggered his fat sister the previous night. The American was so upset that he was obliged to take a handful of pills to avoid a major heart attack on the spot.
Once the semi-final began, amidst frenzied anti-American chanting and a ceremonial burning of a giant stars and stripes flag from the Snoggettes, King III soon crumbled as SNOGGO hypnotised him into a semi-comatose state, thus allowing a powerful serve to hit him right in the mouth, breaking his front incisors and causing $15,000 worth of dental damage. The crowd, led by the delirious Snoggettes, wept with joy as the injured Afro-Yank was stretchered off, wailing in agony as he spat out bits of bloody tooth. The umpire could barely proclaim SNOGGO’s victory so overcome was he with laughter and glee. When the subsequent announcement came that the American had sadly suffered a major stroke and had "passed over" to a better place, the stands had to be forcibly evacuated in order to be hosed down as over two hundred and fifty people had pissed their pants with merriment and the pong was something unhealthy.
IV - The Final
The opponent SNOGGO feared most had made it to the final as the bookmakers had foretold: it was none other than the world’s greatest tennis player, the giant seven-foot high German, Hans-Herbert von Karajan Hitler-Himmler, son of the formidable all-in wrestler Adolf-Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart-Hitler and his Swedish wife Princess Greta Garbo-Himmler, the first woman to swim the Atlantic backwards and blindfolded. SNOGGO was worried as he knew that the fierce Hitler-Himmler was superhumanly strong, having survived three bomb attacks in the Pakistani Open championships as well as having killed four Israeli soldiers with his bare hands during a dispute over a line call during the previous year’s Middle East Pro-Am Tennis Festival and Bar-Mitzvah in Tel Aviv. SNOGGO knew he had to come up with something special if he was to receive the coveted golden cup from the hands of the patroness of the All-England Club, Princess Camelia of Windsor, reputedly the ugliest woman in Britain, and a whore as well.
The mighty Hitler-Himmler entered the Centre Court to resounding boos and catcalls of 'Go home, you fucking Nazi!' from the crowd, the Snoggettes began a rousing chorus of the Horst Wessel Song and the ballboys unfurled a huge upside-down Swastika flag which they invited people to gob on. The umpire sprang to his feet and raised his hand in a friendly Nazi salute, yelling out, 'Sieg Heil! Sieg Heil! Sieg Heil!' and the great hero, SNOGGO, shook the enormous German’s hand warmly, his friendly insult about Hitler-Himmler’s father’s sexual tastes and his mother’s infidelities with racial inferiors and chimpanzees being drowned out by the spectators’ frenzied screams of unreasonable anti-German hatred. The loudspeakers blared out Land of Hope and Glory followed by Rule Britannia, The White Cliffs of Dover, There'll Always Be An England, We'll Meet Again and the National Anthem (three times in a row) and there was a rather touching (if marginally provocative) march-past of orphan children dressed as inmates of Auschwitz (immense boos from everyone) whilst the hideous Princess Camelia gave Hitler-Himmler the finger in her impartial excitement.
The umpire called for silence before donning his Union Jack hat and spitting at Hitler-Himmler several gobbets of yellow phlegm from the depths of his cigar-corrupted lungs. The two players tossed the coin to see who would serve and, after three attempts, the umpire was forced to allow Hitler-Himmler to go first after all. The mighty Kraut served four terrifying aces which SNOGGO managed to dodge and then it was the brave Brit’s turn.
SNOGGO had wisely selected his double-size extra-strong Atomic Snoggo-Racquet and he served a demonic ball at the German’s right elbow, hoping to fracture the evil Nazi's funny bone. But Hitler-Himmler just stepped back and smashed the ball with a nonchalant and arrogantly racially superior swipe enough as to say, 'Take that, du englischer Schweinhund'. SNOGGO was staggered that his opponent’s racquet could withstand the force of his super-hero serve, but the ball whizzed back over the net like a boomerang from a demented Abo, well out of SNOGGO’s reach. One foolhardy German spectator cheered and was promptly bashed in the eye by his neighbour to much laughter from everyone. SNOGGO’s next three serves were all returned by the giant Nazi and SNOGGO found himself two games down. The third game was another four point defeat and indeed SNOGGO was lucky to escape without injury. Trailing by three games and SNOGGO to serve again! Things were looking bad! It was time for desperate measures to ensure a triumph for dear old England, land of the free!
SNOGGO signalled to the Snoggettes and they stared horribly at Hitler-Himmler, their hypnotic eyes willing him to fail, willing him to stumble, willing him to fall flat on his ugly Teutonic arsehole; they used their staggering ventriloquistic skills to lead him to think the umpire and ballboys were calling him a stupid c*nt in three languages (English, German and Hebrew); the fabulous SNOGGO sent telepathic waves of thoughts of defeat to him. Even the umpire gave Hitler-Himmler the finger with eager vigour and impartial derision.
SNOGGO felt it was now or never – he could see the giant Kraut was disconcerted by the combined efforts of SNOGGO, the Snoggettes and the whole crowd, all of whom craved his total doom. The ball went up into the air, SNOGGO used every ounce of his strength and sublime skill and hammered it with the double-size extra-strong Atomic Snoggo-Racquet, letting out a stentorian and blood-curdling shriek of 'Die you stinking Sauerkraut gobbler, die in goddam agony!' And the ball struck the huge Kraut smack in the middle of his forehead, causing him to stagger backwards as his frontal lobes were crushed, more or less utterly. The mighty German champion collapsed with an ear-splitting roar of agony and lay still, apart from a couple of twitches and a puking up of his last meal (eight half-digested frankurters, a kilo of dumplings and a litre of Dortmunder).
The crowd went completely berserk (including a moving rendition of 'The Old Rugged Cross' by Sir Cliff Richard who was in the front row with a "friend") and the scenes shown on TV, in every home in the land, in every pub, in every hospital ward, made sixty million Brits proud of their national heritage of innate superiority. The TV cameras homed in lovingly on the dying German champion as the umpire went and counted him out with a demonic sneer. Dear Princess Camelia rushed onto the court, carrying the solid gold cup in her fat white outstretched arms and pressed it into SNOGGO’s waiting hands. Uninvited, she landed a disgustingly gin-flavoured open-mouthed kiss on his lips, her tongue seeking out his tonsils like a pig after truffles. In spite of the kiss, SNOGGO had triumphed again!
In his hospital bed, the ancient Colonel Snoggo lay weeping for joy as his son, the great SNOGGO, England’s super-hero extraordinaire, accepted the adulation of the crowd whilst fighting off the attentions of the fat and hideous Camelia, and then (to the irritation of the nursing staff who had to interrupt their cheering and drunken patriotic yelling to attempt to resuscitate the old boy) he suffered a major myocardial infarct from which he never recovered.
What a day for SNOGGO! What a day for England! And UP YOURS to the rest of the World!
Honorable mention
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