"I was put off by people at school - my cabbage wasn't as good as other people's, you know, so that put me off." -- Roger McGough
Roger Joseph McGough CBE (born 9 November 1937) is a well-known English performance poet. He presents the BBC Radio 4 programme Poetry Please and records voice-overs for commercials, as well as performing his own poetry regularly. He is a Fellow of Liverpool John Moores University and is a Vice President of the Poetry Society.
"I wish the word whimsical wasn't used now.""I'm terrified of switching the computer on because there are so many poems.""If I decide to be indecisive, that's my decision.""If I do a poetry reading I want people to walk out and say they feel better for having been there - not because you've done a comedy performance but because you're talking about your father dying or having young children, things that touch your soul.""People can put their best poems straight onto the web.""We shouldn't have got married, really. Shouldn't have got married. Too young. Not ready for it.""Whereas with poetry no one has to show anybody really, and you don't have to tell anyone you're doing it.""Yes, you can feel very alone as a poet and you sometimes think, is it worth it? Is it worth carrying on? But because there were other poets, you became part of a scene. Even though they were very different writers, it made it easier because you were together.""You will put on a dress of guilt and shoes with broken high ideals."
Roger McGough was born in Litherland in the north of Liverpool, the city with which he is firmly associated,. He was a pupil at St Mary's College in Crosby with Sociologist and broadcaster, Laurie Taylor , before going on to study French at the University of Hull at a time when Philip Larkin was the librarian there. Returning to Merseyside in the early 1960s, he worked as a French teacher and, with John Gorman, organised arts events. After meeting Mike McGear the trio formed The Scaffold, working the Edinburgh Festival until they signed to Parlophone records in 1966. The group scored several hit records, reaching number one in the UK Singles Chart in 1968 with their version of "Lily The Pink". McGough wrote the lyrics for many of the group's songs and also recorded the musical comedy/poetry album McGough and McGear.
McGough was also responsible for much of the humorous dialogue in The Beatles' animated film, Yellow Submarine, although he did not receive an on-screen credit. At about the same time a selection of his poems was published, along with work from Adrian Henri and Brian Patten, in a best-selling paperback volume of verse entitled The Mersey Sound, first published in 1967, revised in 1983 and again in 2007.
On March 2, 1978, McGough appeared in All You Need Is Cash, a mockumentary detailing the career of a Beatles-like group called The Rutles; McGough's introduction takes so long that he is only asked one question ("Did you know the Rutles?" to which McGough cheerfully responds "Oh yes") before the documentary is forced to move along to other events.
One of McGough's more unusual compositions was created in 1981, when he co-wrote an "electronic poem" called Now Press Return with the programmer Richard Warner for inclusion with the Welcome Tape of the BBC Micro home computer. Now Press Return incorporated several novel themes, including user-defined elements to the poem, lines which changed their order (and meaning) every few seconds, and text which wrote itself in a spiral around the screen.
McGough won a Cholmondeley Award in 1998, and was awarded the CBE in June 2004. He holds an honorary MA from Nene College of Further Education; was awarded an honorary degree from Roehampton University in 2006; as well as an honorary doctorate from the University of Liverpool on 3 July 2006. He was Fellow of Poetry at Loughborough University (1973-5) and Honorary Professor at Thames Valley University (1993).
In 2006, he appeared on an episode of the BBC Television quiz show, QI - (Series 'D', episode 11).
