this is bbc news. we will have the headlines and all the many news stories for you at the top of the hour as newsday continues straight after hardtalk. welcome to hardtalk, i'm stephen sackur. there — i've just used seven words and communicated quite a lot. words can bind us together or push us apart. in a sense, we are all wordsmiths, but many of us shy away from the art form that best harnesses the power of words — poetry. but not my guest today.

john cooper clarke was once dubbed "the punk poet". all his life, he has used words, rhythm and rhyme to find humour and truth in the chaos of everyday life. thanks to the internet, one of his poems has become a worldwide viral sensation. so, where does his word magic come from? john cooper clarke, welcome to hardtalk. hello, stephen. it's great to have you here, john. ijust read your memoir and one of the first sentences in it is this one — "all my life, all i ever wanted to be was a professional poet." now, i've heard of kids

who want to be train drivers, professional footballers, but very rare to find a kid who always knew he wanted to be a poet. how come? when i say "always," i guess from the age of 12 i became enamoured of poetry, thanks to an inspirational teacher mr malone — john malone. who, although he was a rugged, outdoor sporty type of guy, he was a complex character and had a weakness for the poetry of the 19th century — the stuff you might find in the palgrave�*s golden treasury, which then was the go—to anthology for the educational establishment. right, but you're a 12—year—old boy growing up in a tough neighbourhood in manchester — quite a working—class sort of area — and you're telling me you fell in love with the romantic poets? yes, he made it work for us, you know? he conveyed this — it wasn't just me that was affected

by his enthusiasm in this regard, you know? he infected the whole class. and, as you say, you know, it was a tough neighbourhood, it was a tough school. put it this way — we had our own coroner. your own coroner! chuckles. but seriously, he conveyed this enthusiasm to the entire class and it became a kind of — it was a mixed school, so it became a kind of point of honour to use million—dollar, polysyllabic language. now, yourfather was — i know he was a funny man and a storyteller but he wasn't enamoured with the idea that you were going to make a life out of poetry? that's right. it wasn't generally regarded as a reliable engine of wealth — and, of course, money was always a pressing matter in ourfamily. so, in essence, he sort of encouraged you, shall we say, to go out and find a properjob? yeah. and you found several? well, yes — yes, of course.

like i say, money was always an issue. but, no, he advised me against that as a career, you know, but i figured, you know, that there was a place for it in the entertainment world. you know, there were precedents — nobody comes out of nowhere, you know, and i had certain touchstones like the last days of the musical, you know, and the early days of variety. and american culture... yeah, absolutely. ..because you watched lots of american movies and american music. absolutely. so, you had that beatnik thing coming over from the states, where it was a kind of swinging thing to be. do you think that you've broken through, had it not been for punk?

no. because what you did was garnished your act to a whole sort of youth revolution? that's right — that's right. well, i was — when punk came about, i got a residency — this is as good as it got in the cabaret world. i was dressed in a particular way that i thought fitted that environment. you know, i had seen this movie called the small world of sammy lee starring robert stephens and anthony newley, in which anthony newley plays this proto mod—looking character, who would do all the joints in the soho area, you know? gags, this, that and the other — introduce the main act. and i landed that kind of a gig at a club called mr smith's. don't forget — this is about late 1975. yeah, i saw you fairly early on and have a vision of you — you're stick—thin, i think you've got a suit on. suit on, yeah. got this mop of black hair, the glasses — you looked like no other poet on earth that i'd ever heard of. was that very deliberate — you wanted to say to folks...?

0h, absolutely. dressing is one thing that you do on purpose. laughs. and so, clears throat, i had this look already - established of a, you know, a tonic suit with narrow, parallel trousers, natural shoulder ivy league jacket and so, i already planned to look punky in that and everybody else, including your elderly relations, had shoulder—length hair by now and were wearing seed packet shirts and flared trousers. so, i did look kind of, you know, out of time. you did. you look — i mean, you had a look which was unique but what you didn't have — which a lot of the punk music bands had — you didn't appear to be driven by a massive amount of anger. your poems at that time — and ever since, really —

have had far too much sort of human warmth to them to be seen as punk and destructive. i guess so, yeah. and it is considered. but then, there was a general interest in the lyrics in the early days of punk, you know? yeah. you know, they do read like poetry. if you read strummer and jones and matlock and rotten, you know, their lyrics, they were very important. but i'm just — were you angry at that time? you're a young man, you're trying to make it, it's difficult, you're from manchester... anger... ..and i wonder whether you felt...? no, anger wasn't really my default setting. no... i can't remember... ..it doesn't seem so. i've always been — like you say, i was ill as a kid, so it introduced in me a kind of languid character, i suppose. and what you were also doing was writing poems which — and we'll talk about this later — poems which have stood the test of time. i'm going to you, if you wouldn't mind, john, to give us a reading

from one of your best—known poems which i think she wrote in the early �*80s, i wanna be yours. uh-huh. yeah, sure. this is — yeah, it's a valentine poem. kind of a love poem? yeah, yeah. started life as a — i wrote on — for the feast of saint valentine, the annual celebration of courtly romance, and my version goes like this. i wanna be your vacuum cleaner, breathing in your dust. let be your morris marina, i will never rust. if you like your coffee hot, let me be your coffee pot. you call the shots. i wanna be yours. let me be your raincoat for those frequent rainy days. let me be be that dreamboat when you wanna sail away. let me be your teddy bear, take me with you anywhere. i don't care. i wanna be yours. let me be your electric meter, i will never run out. let me be the electric heater you'd get pneumonia without. let me be that setting lotion that grips your skull with deep devotion. deep as the deep atlantic ocean — that's how deep is my devotion. a deep, deep, deep, deep, d—deep, deep. i don't want to be hers,

i wanna to be yours. oh, my god. you've still got it. directly from my heart. what is so striking about that — and i've heard it many times before but i love hearing it every time — it's... thank you. ..it�*s the rhyme, it's the rhythm, it's the energy, it's the drive. and it really works best when you are performing it. oh, that's nice — thank you. is that — but is that you for — you know, we think of poetry, we think of the artist in his garret, writing this stuff things down but for you, are you always thinking, "what will this sound like?" 0h, absolutely. yeah, it is a sonic medium. very intelligent observation. i think more than anything, poetry really should be heard — even if you're reading somebody, you know, the poetry of somebody from the last century, you know, you've got to hear it, you know? you have to hear it. if it doesn't sound any

good, it's no good. that poem, and many others, turned you from being this lad in manchester to a national and an internationalfigure — one of the most famous poets of your generation — and seems to me you found fame quite hard to deal with and you did turn to drugs and ijust wonder whether it was the fame that encouraged you into addiction? possibly. but i was — no, i was using drugs before i became famous — i got to be honest — but i don't think anybody can handle fame. you'd have to be a monster. you'd have to have a voice inside your head telling you that you deserve all this. so, i think anybody — everybody cracks up in some way about it. it ain't natural. it's against nature. but then, you know, people have always accused me of being in showbiz,

even when i wasn't. not so many in showbiz, though, go to the extent you did. imean... but i've had a second... ..heroin use was so bad that i think — you've been very honest in the memoir and other places saying that there are more than one occasion you actually came close to losing your life? oh, yeah, absolutely. yeah, it goes with the territory with that stuff, innit? but happy ending, in my case, but i wouldn't recommend it as a cause of action to anybody else. no. it ain't a club very many people leave. it's not because the addiction... so i'd like — whenever i'm talking about this subject, i like to establish that fact, you know? don't — you know, it's weird — it's weird. i — there used to be a tiresome saying in the hippie era, that if you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem. well, when it comes to narcotics, you know, i really am no expert. i'm not part of the solution. i am definitely part of that problem — or used to be. clean for a long time now, touch wood, thank god, thank god, thank god almighty,

but don't try this at home, kids. the reason i hate talking about it, really, is because it kind of pushes you into a position where you've gotta have some kind of wisdom about it all or something but it's too complex, really... i do understand... it's too complex to deal with in the time allotted, really. and even if you gave me all the time in the world, i'm no wiser about it. but the good news is you did get through it. i did — that's the good news... and it didn't stop you creating, didn't stop you writing? oh, it did. no, it did. no, but i mean, it did for a while. for a while — for a decade. you've talked about a lost decade. for a decade, yeah. but then, you found the urge and the ability to go back to it? yeah. yeah, i really thought i'd lost it. it's possible. you know, it's possible. it could happen at any time — that's why i'm such a grafter now. a grafter in the sense of what you now try to write? yeah, i put office hours in. what, every day?

i put office hours in, you know? do you? i don't always come up with million—dollar goods. but, you know,, it's what i do so, i do it. see... what better thing would i be doing? that is one way in which — and just tell me this sounds ridiculous — but one way in which i see you is quite a small c conservative kind of guy. you're committed to hard work, earning your money and also, when you reflect on, for example — as we've already discussed — the way you educated, the very traditional way... 0h, old—school. rote learning. michael gove—style. yeah! it seems to be you are quite conservative in that... maybe — or socially conservative with a small c, perhaps, i guess, yeah. i'm not by nature a radical kind of guy, i guess. i mean, if you look at kids today and everything they're exposed to online and the internet that goes alongside the school education... i'm utterly, utterly

ignorant of that world. utterly ignorant of that social media word. you mean for yourself? for myself. yeah, i know i'm on it. i know i've had a billion hits for my lyrics. your work is on it! you know, i'm not complaining about it, it'sjust, you know, it's too late for me now with that world. do you think it would be good for our young generation, the next generation of kids, to actually be exposed to poetry in the way you were. to be told, "look, kids. "believe me, it's well worth spending the time to read this stuff". sure. sure, why not? and reading it aloud as well — that was a very big part of the way we — like you say, learning it off by heart and being able to recite it aloud. and, yeah — well, didn't do me any harm. chuckles. one of the twists of fate to your colourful career is that your poems are now on the english school curriculum. that's right, yeah. i couldn't be happier about that.

does that really mean something? yeah, great. with any luck, they'll be learning it off by heart in the old—school fashion. but like you say, i don't know why poetry is regarded as such a minority thing because my theory is that everybody in the world's attempted to write a poem at some particular time, whether for the the set pieces of life such as, well, some valentine's day, for a start, or — you know what i mean? whatever poetry is called for. whenever, you know, a succinct, a succinctly expressed idea is called for, then there's poetry for you. and unlike all the other arts — you know, oil paintings very expensive and you might not be any good. musical instruments are very expensive and you might not be any good. you know, tap dancing lessons are expensive and you might not be — you see where i'm going. i'm with you! there's nothing cheaper than a paper and a pencil. precisely, precisely, yeah. it's there for everyone. people talk about my poetry being accessible but all

poetry is accessible. we, on hardtalk, we talk to quite a number of artists in different fields, from film to theatre to painting, and it's a pleasure to talk to a poet. there is, i think, a sense that right now within the arts, this is a very political time. there are a lot of pressures on creatives and artists in terms of what is deemed to be acceptable, what is deemed to be, in some cases, unacceptable, even cancelled at times. do you, as a writer, an artist, feel societal pressures on you? not in that way, no. i feel absolutely outside of all of that because throat | don't think it's . helpful to know the political world view of any artist. i don't think it helps you to understand their work

or to enjoy — more like to enjoy their work. i don't believe it's helpful. what if people were to look at some of your work over, you know, the five or six decades... they might be able to find some unfavourable ideas by today's standards. i was going to say and some may want to censor you. some may want to say, "you know what? "that poem with that reference is not acceptable." well, ithink, you know, if you can think, it you can say it, most of the — within reason. you know, i'm not here to upset people but i'm also known for being a bit edgy, here and there, so, no, i don't find any subjects forbidden to me, no. and the thing about poetry is that people have to understand, like it said in there, all my life i wanted to be a professional poet, right? so that means that i want money for it. and if i want money for it, if i want to sell tickets, it has to be poetry that people are gonna to like or enjoy in some sort of way. i can't know exactly how but,

you know, there's gotta be something about you that you find anywhere else. so, to take all that kind of thing into account, it's just like a millstone round your neck. but what i always say is, you know, don't look for me. i don't see — i don't write poetry for any kind of therapy or to make anybody a better person or to teach anybody — it's not a didactic exercise. you know, i dragged this art form into a place where it might not have — many places where it hasn't existed before and that's the strength of what i do, you know what i mean? i actually — you know, popularity is very important about it to me so... but what you have to understand that is because i don't use it as a kind of cathartic self—therapy or to get stuff off my chest, that's not the reason i write poetry. but popularity is important? that is important.

crosstalk. but what i was going to say — forgive me for talking over you, stephen — that when you read my poems, i need an angle on things — you've gotta get an angle on things — and in order to do that, what i do is very often, don't look for me in these poems all the time because most of the time — 80% of the time, they're works of imagination. i've heard a conversation somewhere, i'm inhabiting the mind that i imagine belongs to somebody else who's nothing like me. i can think of a million examples of that in my work, you know, where i'm adopt... if you're a poet, you're an adopter of positions. crosstalk. and sometime extreme positions that aren't necessarily coming from your heart, you know what i mean? it's just observations. i do, and what strikes me is that once you've written the poem, you release it into the world and you don't necessarily control how it gets used... not at all.

..and one of the interesting things for you is in the last few years, the poem that i got you to read earlier, i wanna be yours, has, in a sense, taken on a life of its own. absolutely. firstly because the very, very popular band arctic monkeys used the lyrics... i can't thank them enough for this. and now, partly because of arctic monkeys and others who've also loved the poem and used it as a way to do tiktok videos and other things, it has taken off to the point where it has been downloaded more than a billion times on spotify. yeah — that's an eighth of the population of the world that's familiar with my lyrics. i couldn't be happier... and this lad from northern manchester now, his poem — this one, i wanna be yours — is one of the most popular in the united states, indonesia, brazil, a host of other countries. i just wonder for you, the creator of this, what does that mean?

well, i think that without a doubt, you quite rightly mentioning the arctic monkeys there — i think they put wheels underneath that poem and, as you say, you know, it's gone across all the frontiers. i couldn't be happier about that. so, amazing — that's what poetry will do. do you worry about people getting the right message from it or, you know, you've put it out there, you don't really care quite how people use it. not really... no, i don't care. i can't control it, so it's — you know, and i am a control freak. if i could, i would but i can't, so i don't. laughter. you have said you will never stop writing poetry. you're on another international tour. uh-huh. i just wonder whether you have changed, changed the way... oh, what, since the early days? yeah. since the wilderness years and my second... well, you know you were the guy known as the punk poet and — let's face it — punk lived and died in the 1970s. it lasted for two years. yeah. and you can't be called a punk at my age! there's no such thing as a punk at my age!

by its very nature, it means a kid, doesn't it? a naive or inept teenager. but i suppose... but you can't fight mythology. you can't fight — i'm the punk poet and there it is. but i — is there... what's the point in...? is there any part of you that wants to remain — and there's a terrible word that sometimes is used in the arts — �*relevant�* to today's younger generation? no, i don't think i'm that relevant to the it people and, you know — but i'm an analogue guy in a digital world, without a doubt. a man out of time. it's a very — it's a very — i wouldn't have it any other way. it's actually — my position is very — i compare it to the — baudelaire, you know? he who was like a — he was a modern guy, an urban poet in mid—19th century paris and yet, he was kind of... there was a kind of melancholy for the things that had been

lost and i think, you know, you have to have that in your back pocket as a poet. and usually on this programme, we normally end with, you know, one final question and answer. i, actually, am going to ask if we can end today's programme with you reading from i think a poem that sums up the way you are today. you've called the luckiest guy alive. that's right, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. but for how long? chuckles. let's end on it and then decide. yeah, right, then. so, here it is — the titular poem to my latest anthology, the luckiest guy alive. nothing matters and what if it did? there's more than one way to make a quid. you'll be farting through silk if you stick with me, kid. i'm the luckiest guy alive. life is one big happy sky for the luckiest guy alive. just waiting for the trouble to arrive. on the fairway, i'm under par. at the boat club, they call me the commissar. with a monogrammed tankard hanging in the bar, i'm the luckiest guy alive.

i've got a kick—ass drag boat, i ain't allowed to drive. the luckiest guy alive. just waiting for the trouble to arrive. time was it the whole of the law that put my feet on the literal floor. but gravity ain't my friend no more. oh, no, that's for sure. but i'm the luckiest guy alive. i've got a facial tattoo saying, "please revive". the luckiest guy alive. just waiting for the trouble to arrive. chuckles. john cooper clarke, thank you so much.... pleasure, stephen. ..for being on hardtalk. thank you.

hello there. here in the uk, spring warmth is in short supply at the moment. another rather chilly day lies ahead, but it's a very different story in spain and portugal. in fact, a concerning early season heat wave building here, temperatures over the next couple of days could well climb to 38, maybe 39 celsius. that heat has been building to the south of the jet stream. we find ourselves to the north of the jet stream, and so we remain in this rather chilly air mass, at least for the time being. and a really cold start to the day, particularly in the north of scotland, not as cold further south, because here, there is more cloud in the mix. and for many of us, it is going to be a rather cloudy day, particularly across the south of england, into southern wales and also northern ireland. extensive cloud producing some bits and pieces of rain at times. now, through north wales, the north midlands, northern england, southern scotland, it's a mix of patchy cloud, some sunny spells and the odd shower.

the best of the sunshine will be found in northern scotland. but, again, the odd shower here, temperatures of 7—13 celsius, so a little disappointing for the time of year. now, through wednesday night, we'll tend to keep large amounts of cloud. we'll see some rain getting close to northern ireland, into the western side of scotland, some pushing towards the south west of england as well. another rather chilly night, particularly in the north of the uk, not as cold further south. but as we head into thursday, well, this is a rather messy weather chart. there are a couple of different weather systems, one here, one here, likely to bring some outbreaks of rain. this first band of rain is likely to be pushing northwards across scotland. could be some snow over the highest ground for a time, and then outbreaks of rain pushing northwards across parts of england and wales. there may be a drier slot in between those two rain bands. temperatures, if anything, starting to climb a little. a sign of things to come, because as we head towards the end of the week, we will start to pull in some slightly warmer air.

now, we're not talking about spanish or portuguese heat wave here, but we are talking about something a little bit less chilly. and, actually, on friday, while there will be some showers around and perhaps some more persistent rain in northern scotland, we should actually start to see a little bit more in the way of sunshine for many of us. and those temperatures climbing just a touch, and into the weekend, it is going to feeljust a little bit warmer. there will be some dry spells, a bit of sunshine around, but still some showers.

welcome to newsday, reporting live from singapore, i'm mariko oi. the headlines. thousands of people have been fleeing sudan on the first day of a shaky ceasefire. let's finish thisjob. let's finish this job. i know we can. biden announces he'll run again for the white house, at 81 he will be the oldest us president to seek re—election. accused of breaching sanctions against north korea, british american tobacco pays 600 million dollars to us authorities. prince harry claims that the owners of the sun newspaper paid prince william �*a very large sum' —— to settle claims of phone hacking. # 0h, island in the sun...