John Cooper Clarke

Presented with an eight o'clock start, I had in mind a pleasant evening with the Bard of Salford before nipping home for a relatively early bath. Little did I suspect that he had brought two of his pals with him, and something more akin to a poetry marathon was in store. Fortunately, presented with the contrasting voices of Toria Garbutt and Mike Garry, the evening sailed by. These three poets demonstrated just what a wide spectrum of talent is defined as stand-up poetry.

First up was Toria Garbutt, who shared her very personal perspective on love, life and families. Granted, she kicked things off with an evocative walk through of a graffiti smothered subway, but for the most part she explored the pint sized horrors of bad haircuts and ill fitting clothes. Most affecting was her exploration of her relationship with her late sister. Candidly sharing her sister's addiction issues, she contrasted the agony of a sibling beyond the arm's reach of help, with childhood memories of funeral services for carrion found in the garden. Little wonder that she frets over whether she's a good mum, or what a night in A&E feels like when control is taken out of your hands. There was light, notwithstanding all this shade, though her jokey tick box test of whether you are middle class (I'd have thought attending a poetry night should have been on the list) felt a tad performative to me. Heartfelt sincerity was Garbutt's USP, and there's no reason for her to shy away from that.

Mike Garry is probably best known for his ode to Tony Wilson - you can catch the spookily lookalike Steve Coogan and others mouthing to his words on YouTube - but seeing and hearing from the man himself takes his work to an entirely different, and elevated, level. Garry places great emphasis on his performance as a whole, top and tailing his session with shamanic singing - the sea is deep - and ruminating wistfully about penny for the guy. Along the way we got a second eulogy, this time about his mum and what she told him, but apart from the odd anecdote (Bernard Manning gave Dr Clarke his first gig) his set was a conjured spell, crammed with discursive detail about kids' education and the relationship with his son, yet ultimately mesmeric in tone.

And speaking of Dr John Cooper Clarke and the start of his career, getting his first break at the Embassy club is not nearly as odd as it sounds. Where else, after all, was he supposed to perform an art form he practically invented? His writing embraced absurdity and satire, without losing a seriousness of purpose, in a way that fitted perfectly with the ethos of the punk bands he supported in the 70s. Some of the poems performed stem from those heady times, with Chickentown and Twat receiving a level of audience recognition that is without parallel. Times have, of course, changed since then, a momentum exemplified by his retooled version of Beasley Street, as slums were gentrified into Beasley Boulevard. But set aside the flipping through notes and the occasional slipped line, and the act is substantially the same. I can't recall how many times I've seen Clarke, and that's due to the act being largely the same each time. His masterly command of the stage and his considerable charisma hides it well, but he has been trotting out the same gags, the same asides and - of course - the same poems for at least fifteen years.

How big a problem that represents is largely down to the affection in which he is held. As an unapologetic fan I happily turned a blind eye to the dropped notes, and a blind ear to the fluffed lines. The two newcomers to his live performance that came with me were only mildly entertained and were bewildered at my rapture. On reflection, their objectivity probably brought them closer to a dispassionate truth. But I was too busy enjoying the reductive pleasures of his limericks about Tom Jones and Lydia's anatomy to worry about their absolute worth. And apart from the exclusion of I married a Monster from Outer Space, my favourites were all present and correct. Yes, I'd heard the one about the occasional table before, and jokes about milk floats surely demand a preservation order. But it really was - to reach for a similarly outdated reference - the way he told them. This was a celebration of a man's work, but also the man himself, someone who, frankly, we're all a bit surprised is still with us.