In the US, Salman Rushdie rose to a challenge on Twitter by tweeting a limerick in response to a historic crisis: the end of the marriage of the reality TV star Kim Kardashian and Kris Humphries after 72 days.

This adds him to an illustrious lineup of writers who've dabbled in the form, including not just Edward Lear and Wendy Cope (condensing and parodying The Waste Land: "The Thames runs, bones rattle, rats creep; / Tiresias fancies a peep – / A typist is laid / A record is played – / Wei la la. After this it gets deep"), but also the likes of Joyce, Shaw, Twain, Updike and Auden ("TS Eliot is quite at a loss / When clubwomen bustle across / At literary teas / Crying 'What, if you please, / Did you mean by The Mill on the Floss?'"). Judge for yourself, making allowances for topicality and speed of response: "The marriage of poor kim kardashian / Was krushed like a kar in a krashian. / Her kris cried, not fair! / Why kan't I keep my share? / But kardashian fell klean out of fashian".

But surely we can do better than that?