My favourite poem is ‘Twat’

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9 October

Evidently John Cooper Clarke… Live, relayed from Tyneside (though Cooper Clarke is from Salford), was hosted by Johnny Green, who had been manager of The Clash. It comprised a short video of Cooper Clarke reciting to guitar accompaniment from Franky (Frank Sidebottom, alias the late Chris Sievey), a quick word between Cooper Clarke and Green, the main feature of the film Evidently John Cooper Clarke, and a Q&A.

The collaboration that proved to be made with groups such as The Clash was by no means inevitable, except for CC’s self-belief and making it work on stage, even though, as Green said twice, he was very good at dodging bottles. By sheer perseverance, Cooper Clarke got audiences to listen to him as an authentic voice of the late 1970s, and we heard from, amongst others, Kate Nash, Bill Bailey, Steve Coogan and Arthur Smith what he and poems such as ‘Kung Fu International’ and ‘Evidently Chickentown’ meant to them at the time.

The film used intercutting of different versions to show the variation in Cooper Clarke’s performance from slower to incredibly fast, and how he was on and off stage in seconds in a way that his admirers and supporters found very cool, as well, of course, as what he did in between. The fictionally located ‘Beasley Street’ also proved of lasting appeal, a name chosen by Cooper Clarke to give him rhymes.

In terms of his own taste, Cooper Clarke named The Ramones as the final word on music of the time, and we saw him in The Black Lion at Salford as he reminisced about his career.

One of his teachers, Mr Monroe, was an inspiration not just to him, but his whole class, by reading poems that appealed to teddy boys. In turn, ‘I am Yours’, one of Cooper Clarke’s poems, was anthologized, and reading it at school inspired Alex Turner, who both wrote a song in his vein, and has now recorded a setting of the poem.

As Cooper Clarke was proud to say, Ben Drew (also known as Plan B) has also included him in his film Bad Illusions, performing a poem that he wrote after reading Drew’s script. These are both part of Cooper Clarke’s come-back, although what remained unclear is how much time from the 1980s onwards had been unproductive for him, largely because of drugs and their inheritance, and there is no good reason why one would have wanted to be more explicit.


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Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)