Creativity

APPROPRIATELY FOR a column on the obituaries page, we now read along a row of headstones, to see what you irreverent stonemasons have been chiselling into marble.

Oedipus: Beloved Son and Husband (Eric Bridgstock). Gareth Southgate: Sadly Missed (R. Fraser and H. Christopher). Van Winkle: RIP (Tony Harper). British Rail: Lately Departed (N.E. May). Ian Botham: Ashes to Hashish (Jane Carter). Barbara Cartland: Happy Ending (Sue Johnson). Samuel Pepys: And So To Dead (Matthew White). Kim Philby: Gone to Ground At Last (Peter Houghton). Jonathan Aitken: Lies Here, Too (Peter Thomas). Captain Birds Eye: Rest in Peas (RF and HC). Tony Hancock: Stone Me! (E. Cheam).

Richard Branson: The Virgin King (MW). Bill Gates: FW gates@pearly-heaven; Damien Hirst: Forever Preserved; Harry Ramsden: We've Had His Chips (Colin O'Hare). Magnus Magnusson: I Started as Icelandic, so I'm Finnished (Bruce Birchall). Burke & Hare: Way In; Dame Shirley Porter: One Pound the Lot! (R. Finch). Descartes: I Thought, Therefore I Was (Bill Palmer); In Cogito (T.M. O'Grady). Mark Twain: No Exaggeration This Time (EB). Mao Tse-tung: Walkaholic (J.A. Kelly).

Mary Poppins: Blown Away (NM). Father Christmas: Serial Trespasser (SJ). Little Red Riding Hood: Anthropomorphism Victim (Katharine Johnston). Hansel and Gretel: Cannibalism Victims; The Seven Dwarfs: Paedophile Ring (RF). Prince Charming: Foot Fetishist (Mike Gifford). Miss Muffet: Arachnophobe (R.J. Pickles). Robert the Bruce: Arachnophile (Tim Mills). Spiderman: World Wide Webmaster; The Wombles: No Longer Overground, Just Underground; Orpheus: Been There! Done That! (Clair Hubble).

Caligula: My Kingdom for a Horse (Annie Bissett). Moses: Stopped Taking the Tablets (SJ). Picasso: A Picador, to Matisse's Matador (BB). Agatha Christie: Another Overgrown Plot!; Houdini: Gotcha! (Colin Archer). Eugene O'Neill: Long Day's Journey Into Night; Mozart: Eine Grosse Nachtmuzik (JC). Cherubino: Here's an End to My Games With the Girls (Barbara Saville). Frankenstein's Monster: Dunroamin (RF). Thomas Becket: Dunmeddlin (BB).

Eric Bridgstock, Colin O'Hare, Richard Fraser and Helen Christopher win Chambers Dictionary of Quotations. We seek colourful imprecations and oaths. Who has not thrilled to a blood-curdling piratical "Shiver my timbers!"? Or smiled at the affectation of the Restoration fop's "Stab me vittals!"? New phrases, appropriate to the speaker, real or fictional, should arrive at Creativity, Features, The Independent, Canada Square, London E14 5DL by 14 July; results and three more Chambers prizes on 20 July. Second-time prizewinners may nominate another Chambers book (ask me for a catalogue). Next week: bizarre ways to cut short boring phone calls.

Nick Hancock: They Think It's All Over. It Is Now (CH).