Taste is the enemy of creativity. - Pablo Picasso 1881-1973 

How can you measure people's creativity in a competition? 'I just ask them silly questions and see who comes up with the silliest answers,' says MSO's resident Creativity question setter, Bill Hartston. Here is Bill's report on this year's event. 

Measuring creativity is, of course, a little more scientific than just asking silly questions, and the first round provided a good example of how to separate the truly creatively gifted from the ordinarily creative. Under the heading of 'Biological Creativity', we asked the contestants to suggest specifications for a redesign of the human body and specify changes in laws that would follow their alterations. There were plenty of extra eyes, ears, limbs and some very curious relocations for genitals among the more common responses, and chameleon skin was another popular idea. David Bodycombe, the eventual gold medallist, went instead for a second anus to expel fatty products as a slimming aid, and a ball-point pen in place of the middle finger. His anally-connected law change took place in France where all hotels would have to install an extra bidet. Philip Bateman, who won the first ever Creativity event in 1997, relocated our heads inside our chests, thus dispensing with necks altogether. He pointed out, however, that it could lead to confusion between pairs of spectacles and brassieres. 

Round two, Millennial Creativity, put the contestants in the position of archaeologists 100 years hence who have just dug up six chessmen. What were they for? Then, a year later, they dug up a chessboard. How did this change their view? One contestant had the chessmen as a set of orifice cleaners for a baby, with the bishop used to de-wax ears. David Bodycombe saw them as a cocktail-making set, centred on the knight as a bottle-opener. 

Round three, Administrative Creativity, asked for a government White Paper to regulate the spread of creativity. Lucy Broomfield insisted that her White Paper be printed on the sort of tape the police use to cordon off areas of the streets. They could thus use it to contain creative outbursts. David Bodycombe's White Paper was bureaucratically pre-folded into a paper aeroplane - for speedy delivery. 

Round four, Creative Accountancy, began with government accounts and ended by asking the contestants to account for their failure to win the competition. The first part was suggested by a rather feeble sell-off of government assets earlier this year, when the only items listed as having been disposed of were a horse, a fork-lift truck (plus battery), a large number of lawn-mowers and a landrover. What on earth had they all been for? Maguy Higgs opted for a plan to turn the Channel Tunnel into a underground racetrack (the fork-lift trucks were needed to lift up and dispose of the rail tracks, the horse was a guinea pig, the landrover was needed to convey personnel, and the lawn-mowers were held in reserve until the grass grew). 

And finally the excuses: The winner was a mason. I'm allergic to gold. It's more polite to come second. And the excuse David Bodycombe didn't need: My third finger wasn't writing properly.