How things have changed at school...

Posted by: TomK on 04 February 2004

My son (15 and currently studying for Standard Grades) went on a school trip to Newcastle yesterday to hear a “poetry recital”. How dull I thought. Why on earth would any normal 15 year-old want to do that? It turned out John Cooper Clarke was one of the poets involved. The Bard of Salford. When I first heard him back in the late 70s he was a bit of a subversive, underground character. Now they’re studying him at school. Maybe if teaching had been as responsive as this when I was at school I wouldn’t have left with an almost pathological hatred of poetry (The Burial of Sir John Moore at Corunna anybody?) and Shakespeare. Spent an hour or so when he got back listening to Twat, Majorca, Kung Fu International etc. Superb stuff. Couldn’t stop laughing all night.
Posted on: 04 February 2004 by Fisbey
Night people, funky, but neat.
Posted on: 04 February 2004 by JeremyD
It depends on what school you went to. In the late seventies mine was an old fashioned minor public school where, nevertheless, it would have been unthinkable for the Kurt Vonnegut readings that served as R.E. in the fifth form to have been censored. [I just wish I'd missed all the religion that found its way into R.E. in the first four years... Roll Eyes ]

I'm sure JCC would have been welcome.
Posted on: 05 February 2004 by domfjbrown
I saw John Cooper Clarke at the Phoenix in Exeter a couple of months ago - blinding set, but I dunno what the HELL he was on... Looked totally mashed up! His support act (forgotten his name) was even better - a very good night out.

Keep the racket down
We're from f***ing chicken town

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