John Cooper Clarke

It’s still possible to hear the late night festival buzz from outside and the noise seems appropriate, going some way to counter the incongruity of the cow. Clarke’s set has a shambling, rambling quality. He ambles on, grabs the mic, doles out a few well-worn jokes for good measure, standard club stuff, polished smooth with use. The voice remains instantly recognisable as he explains how hard it is to write limericks about people from Limerick and recites his now classic haiku: “To-con-vey one's mood. In sev-en-teen syll-able-s. Is ve-ry dif-fic.”. He punctuates the poems, these verbal eruptions, rapid and rattling, with more jokes, more banter.

Next he takes a nostalgic run along Beasley Street, a piece he has now rewritten and updated for a different urban scene. It’s now Beasley Boulevard, a place of ‘noodle bars and poodle parlours’ with a ‘pub where the regulars are barred.’ He even does the expletive-riddled Evidently Chickentown (which even cropped up in an episode of The Sopranos, something he seems genuinely chuffed about). There’s new material too, including one called I’ve Fallen in Love With My Wife. These are poems that need to be spoken, that require that distinctive Salford twang to really come alive.

And then it’s over and the crowd spills out into the Edinburgh night. It’s still fizzing with bodies and beer outside, fuggy and foggy and damp – but this feels apt, a fitting finish, and it seems the rain has stopped.

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