John Cooper Clarke

He's spent the last 30 years wearing the same clothes, often reading the same poems and his biggest supporting role has been to the Honey Monster in the 1990's Sugar Puffs adverts. John Cooper Clarke is still a one off though. He's been acknowledged as a major influence by Alex Turner from Arctic Monkeys. You can definitely hear the JCC influence in Turner's scabrous sneer and interest in society's crusty white underbelly.

The rapid fire delivery came from trying to grab an audience's attention when he did support gigs for the Punk acts. The poems themselves are funny, clever and musical, even without the music. You get the sense that he could probably quote Baudelaire by chapter and verse, but is more likely to write about the clap clinic.

He's argued that "Poetry has always been and always will be a very different way of writing, a minority interest. It's language with its best suit on." The live show has always been a mixture of poetry and the jokes that he uses to cover the gaps while he's trying to find the next poem. That helped keep the audience interested in the early days, but he could also handle a heckler.

"I can't hear you mate... your mouths full of shit".

Like Mark E Smith that other Salford bladdered balladeer it's partly the sound of his voice that drags you in, those extra syllables aah. Words that you can chew on. Delivered in a voice that could strip paint and would melt the ear wax of any unfortunate ear that found itself on the receiving end of his whispered sweet nothings.

First single the Psycle Sluts ep came out on Manchester label Rabid records and debut album Disguise In Love came out on CBS in 1978. His records were often criticised by people who'd seen him live who thought that the music got in the way of the words. The music was supplied by the Invisible Girls a rag bag assembly including Buzzcock Pete Shelley, producer Martin Hannett and Karl Burns from The Fall.

You can hear echoes of what Hannett was also working on at the time. Evidently Chickentown from 1980's album Snap Crackle and Bop has a snippet of reverbed drums that fade in and out of the mix but sound like they came from a Joy Division session.

There was a live album Walking Back To Happiness that came out in 1979. It covers the full range of the entertainment spectrum. From poems about Flashers "Gabardine Angus, open your coat" to the package holiday hell of Majorca "I got drunk with another fella who'd just brought up a previous paella" and "where the Double Diamond flowed like sick". This being 79, it got the full gimmicky vinyl treatment. Walking Back To Happiness was released as a 10 inch clear vinyl album.

It's accompanying single Twat. (I'd loved to have been in the CBS office when the plans for the new single were announced….'so what's it called then John?'), came out on a double grooved single.

Which meant you had a 50/50 chance of either playing the full frank and foul version "Like a nightclub in the morning you're the bitter end, like a recently disinfected shithouse, you're clean round the bend" or it's edited, more refined cousin Splat. On the Splat version the expletives are drowned out by comedy sound effects.

The other single Gimmix came in triangular orange vinyl version. It's a roll call of past gimmicks from "The balmy days of the hula hoop craze to the skateboard panic of today." You can hear the contempt in his voice on the line "Teasmades, cushions that fart. The Lord of the Rings." It's like the Punk version of Peter Kaye's "Garlic Bread" line.

Although you should really buy them all, Snap Crackle and Bop is the best of his studio albums. Evidently Chickentown feels like late 70's Manchester when the whole city centre seemed to collapse into it's failing Victorian sewers. Like Venice without the views. Or the Gondolas. But with the pigeons. "The bloody pubs are bloody dull, the bloody clubs are bloody dull, of bloody girls and bloody guys with bloody murder in their eyes" and where "The bloody weed is bloody turf; the bloody speed is bloody surf."

Beasley Street's account of where Thatcherism descends into Dickensian squalor should be taught in schools. And there aren't many lines more chilling than "Keith Joseph smiles and a baby dies in a box on Beasley Street." JCC's pronunciation of the words "Beasley Street" has more E's in it than Brian Harvey and takes about 6 months for him to say.

Everyone needs a prison song. 36 Hours is a jail guitar door clanging blues. Where if the regime of "Shit, shave shower and a shoe shine, That's it. Sack time" doesn't put you on the straight and narrow then the threat that "Everyone looks like Earnest Borgnine" surely will. There's a guitar line that that sounds like Pete Shelley reused it from ESP by Buzzcocks.

Zip Style Method came out in 1982. Musically it's the weakest of them, with the more polished synths and treatments actually making it sound more dated than the murky backing tracks used on the first 2 studio albums.

But you do know exactly what he's talking about on The Midnight Shift when he describes somebody's face being "Like a long abandoned baseball boot with the tongue hanging out"

So those are the records then. Due to his own self confessed disorganisation and possibly a result of living with Nico (wouldn't have thought their shopping list contributed much to their 5 daily portions of fruit and veg), the records dried up and promised books and novels didn't appear.

I saw him at Birmingham University at in 1985, ironically on the same bill as John Hegley's band The Popticians. John Hegley not only writes funny, clever poetry, but is also more likely to get the phone call when Radio 4 need a poet. On that night JCC just seemed dazed and disinterested. He rattled through the poems and then rattled home. No jokes, banter or interest. On a good night though he's unstoppable.

He was on stage for over 2 hours at a comedy night at Moseley Rugby Club in 1999. I saw the last 20 minutes when he supported the Only Ones in Wolverhampton earlier this year. A storming effort, with new material and quality jokes. He's pushing 60 but still got the shades and hedgecombed hairstyle and probably wears winklepicker slippers at home. And he's still following his key artistic principle. "I always try and talk in tune"