John Cooper Clarke
“Condoms were very difficult to obtain those days in Ireland. They smuggled them in inside crates of heroin.” So ends one of the night’s many anecdotes. It’s difficult to ascertain whether we are watching a stand-up comic or a spoken-word poetry performance. John Cooper Clarke is standing up and the near-capacity crowd is laughing, so it may just be a question of semantics.
Having turned 60 this year, and considering his less than healthy past, it may surprise some to see John Cooper Clarke in such quick-fire, and stylish, form. His trademark birds-nest hairdo is perfectly feathered. His rakish frame, supported by the obligatory drainpipe trousers, is propped up with the ever-present Chelsea boots. He is dishevelled but in the most elegant manner. The red-tinted sunglasses, which may be more for prescriptive rather than style purposes, checked-tweed jacket, dandyish scarf and polka-dot shirt complement the time-worn wandering-minstrel image.
Advancing years and inevitable decay is clearly on the wordsmith’s mind. “I may never live long enough to be as old as I look”, Clarke drawls in his thick-Mancunian accent. “I’m so old the Dracula Society has been in touch. They have an annual event in Whitby.” It is typical of the surreal humour that, seemingly, comes easily to the Bard of Salford.
The raucous Preston crowd is an even mix of old and young and greet Clarke with a reverential roar as he takes to the stage. One over excited member of the audience decides the gig is a personal question and answer session and repeatedly interrupts. All well and good if only the buffoon in question could actually formulate a sentence. “I wouldn’t mind if I didn’t need a translator to understand you” comes Clarke’s acerbic put down.
During the 90-minute set Clarke only performs about ten poems. The rest of the allotted time is given over to dealing with a boisterous crowd, reciting long, stream of consciousness tales or spitting out furious one-liners. “If Jesus was Jewish why the Spanish name?”
The crowd-pleasing highlight comes when Clarke begins a well-rehearsed tirade against, Preston’s arch-rival, Burnley, where he will visit later in the tour. “Burnley is Darwin’s waiting room. I met a guy who was his own father and he was the town intellectual”, he says sardonically, “he mastered the art of breathing with his mouth shut.”
He recalls staying in a hotel where they stole his towels. The audience laps it up, loving the chance to feel superior to their Pennine neighbours. “I’ll tell you once and I’ll tell you firmly, I don’t ever want to go to Burnley, What they do there don’t concern me, Why would anyone make the journey,” Clarke recites from his tatty, well-thumbed ring binder.
The show comes to a close with his most well-known poem (it was used on the end credits on an episode of The Sopranos), Evidently Chickentown. A gloriously foul-mouthed, splenetic treatise on dead-end English towns. “The fucking pubs are fucking dull, The fucking clubs are fucking full, Of fucking girls and fucking guys, With fucking murder in their eyes.”
So, Preston on a Friday night then.
Edward John Devlin