Comedy perfomance poet Robert Garnham has won a prestigious US poetry award. Paignton-based Robert won the Wergle Flomp humour poetry contest’s $2,000 first prize with his poem ‘Torquay, 2 – The other Team, 2’ , of which the judges said: “Could be a skit performed by the late great John Inman of Are You Being Served? The genially befuddled, foppish narrator is trying to understand his straight mate's ‘culture’ by attending a British football match, but the players' salient features, for him, have nothing to do with the sport's inexplicable rules.”

Another poet described the Wergle Flomp award as “the Olympics of comedy poetry”. Robert said he was “completely astounded” to win. His poem beat almost 8,000 other entries.

Jendi Reiter, final judge of the Wergle Flomp contest, said, "Our entrants creatively mangled many entertaining topics. The difference between finalists and award-winners came down to the tightness of the poem and whether it had layers of meaning beyond the obvious main joke. We liked how the winning poems went beyond silliness to say something insightful about relationships." Lauren Singer assisted with the judging.

ILLUSTRATION: MELODY IZA