Review: John Cooper Clarke at Leeds City Varieties
The Bard of Salford is in no hurry to hand over his crown as most important living poet worldwide.
John Cooper Clarke has achieved something few contemporary poets can claim: a place in mainstream popular culture. On stage, his comedian’s timing and rock ’n’ roll swagger make it easy to see why.
The route to that recognition, however, has not been straightforward. The Bard of Salford made his name in the 1970s opening for bands including the Sex Pistols and Buzzcocks, perfecting a delivery closer to horseracing commentary than to Philip Larkin.
After years lost to addiction, his renaissance gathered momentum in 2007, when The Sopranos featured ‘Evidently Chickentown’ in an episode’s closing scenes. Arctic Monkeys’ adaptation of ‘I Wanna Be Yours’ followed in 2013. By 2025, he had become the first poet to headline a UK indoor arena, at Manchester’s Co-op Live.
The facts are almost enough to convince you that touring partner Mike Garry is right when he introduces Clarke as, “the most important living poet worldwide”. Clarke, with trademark modesty, goes one better in his self-description as “Jim Morrison, but sexy”. That would have to be Morrison made out of pipe cleaners; his wiry frame vanishing when he’s behind the mic stand.
He tackles his physical appearance with typical humour on ‘Get Back On Drugs You Fat F***’, a scabrous reflection on the unhelpful comments he received after giving up his long-term drug habit (“We only like you when you’re plastered”). That eye for the grittier aspects of life extends beyond the personal on ‘Beasley Street’, which deals with poverty and political neglect (“A lightbulb bursts like a blister/ The only form of heat”). Long associated with the Thatcher era, he’s at pains to point out it was written prior to her election.
That attention to northern working-class life finds echoes in both Garry and Toria Garbutt, who also performs. The former pays affectionate tribute to his hometown of Manchester in ‘St Anthony: An Ode to Anthony H Wilson’ and celebrates his mother’s life in ‘What Me Mam Taught Me’. But it’s Knottingley’s Garbutt who most effortlessly commands the stage, finding humour in the trauma of bad haircuts and the telltale signs of being middle class (“If your mum uses the tongs to pick up the bread roll in the supermarket”).
If Garbutt is the heir apparent, Clarke is in no hurry to hand over the crown. Ostensibly touring his latest poetry collection, Have It, he knows the audience wants the greatest hits; at the merchandise stall, T-shirts are doing better business than books. References to ageing become material rather than signs of slowing down. “I was going to milk it but there was a staircase involved,” he jokes as he returns for the encore.
His performance style lets poems and monologues bleed into one another. Rejected insurance jingles arrive in faux New York accents, while the gags could have come from Ken Dodd’s notebooks (“I’m always accused of living in the past. At least the beer is cheap there!”). The irreverence makes his poetry accessible and relatable, with no subject out of bounds. Here, he covers everything from guestlists to thugs and hire cars.
Clarke has circumnavigated the world ten times, as he repeatedly tells the audience. It’s uncertain how many more tours lie ahead, but in his seventh decade he still has the energy and consummate performance skills to persuade the crowd that he wants to be yours.