After lunch on Saturday our poetry workshop was led by Mr Roger McGough. There were several reasons why I should have been excited, perhaps even slightly awed, at this prospect. For one, Roger is the current president of the Poetry Society of which I am a member. (I should know this.) He is also the co-author of The Mersey Sound, the best (ever) selling poetry paperback in the UK. He presents Poetry Please on BBC Radio 4. (Where have I been?) He wrote big chunks of the dialogue for the Beatles' cartoon film Yellow Submarine. He was in the pop group The Scaffold which scored a number one UK chart hit in 1968 with Lily the Pink. He's a regular on Stephen Fry's QI television quiz show. He's got an effing CBE, for Christ's sake!
Oh, that Roger McGough.
Roger read to us several of his most celebrated (and some notorious) poems, including the stunningly satirical The Lesson about a schoolteacher who massacres his class, and the dark and disturbing Jogger's Song, as well as many of the playful and humourous poems for which he is best known. What a charming man, and what an honour to have sat at the same table.
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