Dr John

Very enjoyable evening yesterday. Hadn't seen John Cooper Clarke live before, and he was very entertaining, a full house too. I guess he starts all his performances like this, but he opened with 'thank you Tewkesbury for having me back, but to be brutally honest I can't really remember if I've ever been here before'. The poems were good, mostly recited at 100 mph, but his anecdotes and jokes were probably the best bits. 'My eyesight is not so good, somewhere between Mr Magoo and Ray Charles!' Lots of four letter words of course, so not for everyone.

One of the 'support' poets, the somewhat younger Luke Wright, was also very good. He performed a very clever poem entitled 'IDS', about Iain Duncan Smith, and which only used one vowel ('i') throughout. We bought his collection, The Toll, which he signed for us.

We were very taken by a hand painted figurine of JCC - mrsfb has a collection of figures reading books, as this one was. I was expecting it to be expensive, maybe £50, but was a bit surprised at the £150 price tag. A limited edition maybe, but crikey that was nearly as much as I paid for my second hand wide angle lens!