John Cooper Clarke

Part poet, part punk, part old school Northern stand-up comedian, John Cooper Clarke's rapid delivery, tales of working-class life and razor sharp wit made him a cult hero and one of Britain's most unique poets. Growing up in Salford in the north of England in the 1950s and 1960s, Clarke was inspired by the war poetry of Henry Newbolt and started performing his own rhymes at tough working men's clubs across Manchester in the mid-1970s. When punk broke in 1976, Clarke was asked by Howard Devoto (then front man of The Buzzcocks) to compere and perform at gigs for the Sex Pistols, Joy Division, The Fall, Siouxsie And The Banshees and Elvis Costello. He soon became known as the poet laureate of punk, adopting the ferocious pace and attitude of The Ramones and oozing more cool than most front men with his big, bushy shock of black hair, dark shades, pointy Chelsea boots and pencil thin frame. He first started putting his work to music in 1977 backed by The Invisible Girls (a band formed specifically for Clarke by friends Martin Hannett, Pete Shelley, Steve Hopkins and Bill Nelson), but it was his third album Snap, Crackle And Bop (1980) which stands as his finest moment, reaching Number 26 in the UK charts and producing the classic Beasley Street - a grim, kitchen sink portrait of inner city Manchester. His fame grew in the 1980s when he featured in a series of television adverts for Sugar Puffs, and he lived with the Velvet Underground's Nico for a long while. His career faltered as a result of drug problems but revived after his classic track Evidently Chickentown was used in the TV series The Sopranos. His poems also became part of the National Curriculum in the British education system, helping to inspire a new generation of artists, including Alex Turner, Kate Nash and Plan B.