Roger McGough

Roger McGough was born into a 'very volatile, very gabby, Liverpool family'. His house was a two-bedroom terrace near the docks at Seaforth, with a toilet at the bottom of the yard and the bath in the kitchen. Growing up in the war 'new books, like bananas, were heard of, but not seen'. Roger's dad was a docker and 'quite frightened of books' but his mum read to him every night. He was educated at St Mary's College and the University of Hull (where he was encouraged to write poetry by the librarian, Philip Larkin). He first shot to fame in the 60's as a singer with pop-group The Scaffold ( "Lily the Pink" and “Thank You Very Much”) In 1967 Penguin published "The Mersey Sound" an anthology which featured Roger McGough, Brian Patten and Adrian Henri and went on to sell over half a million copies and became the bestselling anthology of British verse. Since then his numerous collections of poetry have established him as a popular, distinctive and powerful voice in contemporary poetry. Roger has received several awards for his work including the Signal Award for the best poetry book for children. He has received BAFTA and Royal Television Society awards for television programmes and was chosen by BT to be their poet on the internet. His performances are always popular with a wide ranging audience. You can see Roger McGough’ s act 'The Way Things Are.' at the Picture House on Friday 6th July.