In January 2018 Clarke appeared as a contestant on an academic version of BBC One's Pointless Celebrities partnered with historian Suzannah Lipscomb; they reached the head-to-head round. [28] He has also been a panellist on 8 Out of 10 Cats Does Countdown. Perry, George,Clarke, John, d. ca. 1815, engraver,Chambers, Robert W. (Robert William) former owner. DSI,Cooper Union Library, former owner. DSI (1811) Clarke added: “It was a tedious saying among hippies: if you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem. I was very much part of the problem.”

Conchology, or, The natural history of shells : containing a new arrangement of the genera and species, illustrated by coloured engravings executed from the natural specimens, and including the latest discoveries Volume c.2 [LeatherBound]Salford poet John Cooper Clarke has certainly led a fascinating life and documents it in - a lot of - detail in this memoir. Especially detailed are the account of his early years in a display that threatens to derail his story. saw Clarke present a documentary on Thomas De Quincey's Confessions of an English Opium-Eater in the BBC's second series of The Secret Life of Books. [25] He has appeared as a guest on the comedy panel show Would I Lie To You? on 14 August 2015 [26] and again on 7 January 2022. [27] Clarke was born in Salford, Lancashire, in 1949. [2] He lived in the Higher Broughton area of the city and became interested in poetry after being inspired by his English teacher, John Malone, [3] whom he described as "a real outdoor guy, an Ernest Hemingway type, red blooded, literary bloke". [4] During an April 2018 episode of Steve Jones's radio show Jonesy's Jukebox, Clarke revealed one of his early inspirations to be the poet Sir Henry Newbolt, reciting from memory a portion of Newbolt's poem "Vitaï Lampada". I Wanna Be Yours is very much a book of four quarters. The first, detailing his childhood and early life in a mainly Jewish area (he acted as a "shabas goy" for his orthodox neighbours) of Salford in Manchester is fascinating: as a piece of writing on the social history of this part of Lancashire in the early 50s it is glorious, vivid and full of detail. JCC's writing evokes so much atmosphere that you can visualise everything in glorious sepia. Every drug addict is virtually the same person. There’s not really much point in dwelling on it. I needed money more than ever, so I had to work. The glamour was flaking off with every new job. I really felt like I was selling my sorry ass.”

I Wanna Be Yours’ (2020) Is the autobiography of erstwhile ‘punk poet’ - now ‘people’s poet’ Dr John Cooper Clarke - the book title itself taken from one of Clarke’s most popular poems of the same name.

I was riveted by John Cooper Clarke's 2020 memoir I Wanna Be Yours. I went for the audiobook version which is sublime. I could listen to John Cooper Clarke read the telephone directory. To hear the great man read his hugely entertaining autobiography was a rare treat.

By early 1980s, he was also in the grip of a heroin addiction which would see him write very little for over a decade. He cleaned up in the early 90s after marrying his second wife, Evie, and having a daughter, Stella. His star began to rise again in 2007 when one of his poems was used in an episode of The Sopranos and others were included on the GCSE syllabus, which led to collaborations with artists like Plan B and Alex Turner of the Arctic Monkeys. Unusually, I was more interested in reading this biography for the company the man kept, rather than the man himself. I've also had the joy of meeting him a few years ago and he is a very lovely gentleman indeed. So it was with delight I received his memoirs 'I wanna be yours' as a Birthday present from my friend. And eager to know more about this elusive figure, I dived in.I wanted to like this book, I'm a fan of John Cooper Clarke's work and have seen him on stage a couple times and loved his shows. This book was not for me there were too many references to other muicians, which for some people would be of interest, but not me.