John Cooper Clarke: ‘I could go to six funerals a week. But no man can live on vol au vents alone’

The Bard of Salford, the poet laureate of punk (“too chippy for hippy”), John Cooper Clarke is back with a new book of poems (his fourth). Have It is a typically wry, sharply observed collection of works that reflect on aging, the passage of time and the trials of modern life.

Now 77 and something of a national treasure (a term he hates), his first paid performance was in 1974 at the Embassy club in Manchester, where he was taken on by Bernard Manning. His first release was an EP, Innocents, in 1977, produced by the celebrated Joy Division producer Martin Hannett. His myriad achievements since then include an honorary doctorate, three poems on the national curriculum for GCSE English and a bestselling memoir, published in 2020, named after his magnum-opus ode to love I Wanna Be Yours. He has many famous fans, and Arctic Monkeys’ Alex Turner and Ben “Plan B” Drew have featured him in their own work. For him, though, his most pleasing achievement came when Evidently Chickentown was played over the closing credits of an episode of The Sopranos, a TV show that he loves. (He reckons all the best TV programmes start with an “s” – The Simpsons, Seinfeld…)

Born in Salford, Greater Manchester, these days he lives in Colchester in Essex with his wife, Evie (they have a daughter, Stella). It’s from there that he chats on the telephone for this interview, on a landline – he is not, he comments, a modern guy.

I think any person of advanced years will know what I mean. I think it’s got a sexual element… but there are a lot of do's you can’t do. Make plans for the future, for instance.

Yeah, I think I do. But you know, I might have always done that… As a sick kid [he had TB as a child] living in the shadow of the mushroom cloud, I was totally aware from a very young age that it could happen now. I’ve always had that sort of perspective: [the possibility of] sudden death always seems to have been with me! Whether through illness or fear of nuclear destruction.

Oh absolutely, I mean, to the point that I am borderline ashamed of the stuff that made me famous. I mean, who among us agrees with their younger self at our time of life? You know, God – was that my worldview? I think if I'd have bumped into myself I'd have had to say “shut the fuck up”! Not all the time, though… I've just been looking through my old stuff and thinking I would only recommend my first book mainly on account of the beautiful pencil illustrations by my late friend Steve Maguire. [Ten Years in an Open Necked Shirt and Other Poems was published in 1983.] There's the odd glimpse of what is to come. I'm not indulging in any form of self-loathing here. But – well, everybody's entitled to have an idiotic worldview in their teens.

You haven’t got enough room for the list. I’ve said it before and I will say it again: I could go to six funerals a week, but no man can live on vol au vents alone. I'm selective. But I'm going to give them up. I'm giving them up as a bad job.

Oh don’t worry about me. I'm OK. Do I feel healthy? Not particularly, but I’m not ill.

Oh yeah, you've got to watch that. All these vehicles that have commandeered the pavement… scooters, bikes. You know, you've got to look both ways before you come out the door. They are going to have to rewrite the Highway Code.

No, nothing. No, no. Some clean clothes, have a shave and step out. I used to ride the bike a lot, but it's in shite order at the moment, and I'm going to have to wheel it down to our local cycle specialist, Cycle King, and give it a complete overhaul. It's a real old-school bike – a 1959 Hercules in British racing green. You know, its ideal cycling territory, Essex. It's quite flat. My only modern input on the bike is a three-speed Sturmey-Archer gear setup and I don't even need that. Flat as a pancake.

What do [beggars] do? What do they do? They're going to have to get card machines, and they're expensive. It's got to impinge on their lifestyle. I do give money to beggars, yeah. The first guy gets all my spare change. I'm good like that! 

I like John Betjeman – he could recite his poetry. He's my favourite. And you know, Pam Ayres, [her] Oxfordshire [accent]. Very attractive. Great stuff. I’ll tell you who was lousy at it. There's a recording of Oscar Wilde doing The Ballad of Reading Gaol. Terrible. No delivery. No wonder he wrote plays for actors. I always say, probably the world's full of poets that are far better than I am but they're shrinking violets, a lot of them, so they're no good at putting it out in a public place of entertainment. But I say to them, “well, write your poetry and hand it over to one of our many unemployed actors”. Do both of you a bit of good.

There are loads of great people. I'm not going to list them – if I miss one of them out I'm in the doghouse. But a couple. Obviously I like the work of Mike Garry, Toria Garbutt, Clare Ferguson-Walker, the people that work alongside me in most of my shows. And, you know, Tim Wells, Phill Jupitus, . There are many gifted versifiers around. And these people I mentioned there are not shrinking violets either; they claim their own words. 

I can't really remember what I knew at 18. I kept my mouth shut more often, perhaps. My aunties always used to say that I had an old head on young shoulders. I was obsessive, reading all the time

I do, yeah, that ain’t changed. I'm always reading.

I’m reading the Jerry Lewis story [the American actor and comedian], it’s by a wonderful writer called Shawn Levy, who I've become friends with. He’s a movie critic for the Oregonian out of Portland, Oregon, and I ran into him when I was there years ago. I was a big fan of his and little did I know that he's, you know, he's a big Johnny Clarke fan. That's amazing. I love his work. He's written a number of books that end in the word “confidential” – Rat Pack Confidential, Dolce Vita Confidential, which is a really fabulous book – and King of Comedy, the Jerry Lewis story. I'm  just coming to the end of that at the moment. 

The 50s and 60s, the music. 

I love Elvis, man. Sensational. A couple of years ago I was doing a little tour of the US and I hooked up with the family to go to Graceland. The best holiday we've ever had. Very exciting.

I like eating with my family in a restaurant. No washing up. It's just always enjoyable. Yeah, I can't think of anything I'd rather do. Watching telly and eating out with the family.

Oh loads of things. Just the little things. I'm slightly depressed about never becoming computer-literate because everything depends upon it now. Even access to health facilities; it refers you to an app. I don't know what that is. I've done 1,000 podcasts… I don't know what they are. Or even what kind of people get involved with them. But the ones I've been on have been with the sort of people that I already like – Vic Reeves, Harry Hill, I’ve got one coming up with Louis Theroux. So I figure these people are quite high-profile, they’ve got the ear of the public, so why not? The media of self-publicity has altered and I haven't altered with it. I've got an office full of good advice, and I need those modern people. 

God, blimey, I don't want to get partisan about it. I don't really want to get tangled up in anything to do with politics any more, you know. It's just not what it was. I used to be regarded as quite a leftwing person. I don't think I've changed… [but] the definition of what is leftwing has really been destroyed by identity politics. I do think people become more rightwing the older they get, no doubt about that. You know, time teaches you to be pragmatic. [But] I don’t want to alienate a load of people. I like young people. I meet a lot of them; I meet all sorts of people in fact. If there's one thing I'm grateful for it's that I've got a completely transgenerational fan base. It's precious and [so] I don’t want to go all political one way or another.

Yeah, I believe that poetry, like any art, is useless. The defining nature of art is its uselessness. As soon as it becomes useful, it's something else. If I wrote a poem that was useful to a political party, it would render it into propaganda. Or if it was advertising a product, again it would be propaganda of a commercial kind. Though I've broken that law and I've got a couple of commissions in this collection – poems that wouldn't [have existed otherwise]. You take away the name of the product, they are standalone poems that are too good to waste.

[Makers of] gin. But I’m not going to mention the name because they didn't accept the jingles – or the gingles, I should say. But the gin poems are in the book, under the collective title The Pink Elephant in the Room. The reason they’re called that is because what they didn't like about my jingles was the suggestion that the drinking of gin would alter your state of mind.

Yes, it gets you pissed. But they want to promote “sensible drinking”, whatever that is. So it was too much for their limited palate. It's always alcohol firms that get in touch. What are they trying to tell me? “He’s a credible voice for the inebriated”?

I can't think. Fancy me not being able to think of one! I think my favourite motto came from a friend of mine a long time ago and it's this: “you can't educate a mug”. I love that. I'm reminded of that every day. The guy used to run a rock’n’roll pub in Kennington, just up the road from the Oval, called the Cricketers. Anyway, I forget who we were talking about, but he finished it off [with] “Well, you know what, John? At the end of the day, you can't educate a mug.” You can throw a “fucking” in there if you like: “You can't fucking educate a mug.” That’s it! I couldn't improve on it.

Yeah, but then again, too many to mention.

Have It is published by Picador (RRP £16.99; buy it at a discount at the Nerve Bookshop)

John Cooper Clarke will be appearing at the Laugharne Weekend (19-21 March, 2027). The Nerve is the media partner and members can buy discounted tickets. For details go to thenerve.news/members