Despite his best (or, rather, worst) efforts, his movie escaped him.
Their photographs gather some of the nation's worst efforts at graffiti.
Bayern, despite their defenders' worst efforts, could have easily scored five or six, too.
Despite my best (worst) efforts, we agreed to stay connected, while we juggled our new family's needs and his family's demands with everyone's grief.
But our temporary residence, despite the worst efforts of Enoch Powell's bovver boys and their contemporary equivalents, turned out to be permanent.
One encouraging aspect of the 2016 election result is that the very best and worst efforts of the Murdoch press have not mattered a hill of beans in the outcome.
Irrespective of their best and worst efforts, they continue to represent the promise of a prelapsarian better future to a culture that enjoys nothing more than seeing the people who have failed to fulfill that promise punished.
Director and producer Chris Atkins suggested on Radio 4's Today programme that the council's traditional anxiety to "tick all the boxes" led to only his worst efforts ever receiving funding – not least, he explained, a tale of "Asian lesbians making curry in Glasgow".
