With his gravel-voiced on-stage renditions of rhymes about everyday urban Britain, John Cooper Clarke scribbled his way into Seventies pop culture.
He became the first big-time performance punk poet – a warm-up act for the Sex Pistols, with famous fans ranging from Sir Paul McCartney to Kate Moss.
And his life has been as chaotically unpredictable as his next line – plunging into the murky depths of a drug addiction that nearly killed him then rising to national treasure with his works studied in classrooms across the land.
Now clean and, to his own surprise, a happily married family man at 71, the bard of Salford has written his memoirs...from working-class beginnings to rubbing shoulders with the stars.
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