I Wanna Be Yours: John Cooper Clarke

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After 20 years of performing the same material, Clarke re-established contact with guitarist Rick Goldstraw, who had founded Blue Orchids and played with The Fall and Nico.

At 5' 11' (8 stone, 32 inch chest, 27 inch waist), in trademark suit jacket, skin-tight drainpipes and dark glasses, with jet-black back-combed hair and mouth full of gold teeth, John Cooper Clarke is instantly recognisable. Not so sure about the faux cockney rhyming slang - it never works if it needs to be explained - but I did like the "scam or scamolas" that were frequently commented upon. I read the book - and reading some reviews here - I kind of wish I had gone for the audio book - but never mind, its impossible to not read it and hear his accent, joyfully and amusingly coming from every page. What can I say, the 70's and 80's were a weird, weird, gloriously outrageous, wonderfully fun, utterly ridiculous era.The first half of the book is an exercise in nostalgia as Clarke details growing up in the 1950's, 60's and early 1970's and the social and cultural developments in Britain during those decades with a welter of information about his favourite films, books, comics, songs, bands and much more. His life is as extraordinary as you’d expect and had me wondering if it is actually a privilege to be working class. In October 1981 Clarke appeared in episode 2 of series 3 of The Innes Book of Records, reciting " Evidently Chickentown". His vocals from both of his Suns of Arqa tracks have been used on numerous remixes by the band ever since.

A joy to listen to, punctured with his trademark caustic wit and wisdom, Clarke the People's Poet is capable of a florid turn of phrase, but keeps the lyrical flourishes infrequent enough to be impactful.Listening to this as an audio book was an excellent choice on my part, Clarke has the sort of voice stylings that are mandatory for the story of his own life. I genuinely feel that his lyricism and enunciation would be like having an every day conversation with John Cooper Clarke. About drugs, Clarke is both connoisseurial and fastidious – he has a horror of being ill, yet shooting up three times a day allows him to live “like a normal citizen”.