Phill Jupitus is Porky the Poet in 27 Years On – Edinburgh festival review (original) (raw)

What's so funny?
The fact that Phill Jupitus first made his name in performance poetry. In the mid-80s, Jupitus traded under the name Porky the Poet, an act that he never brought to the Edinburgh fringe. Until now.

So it's the man from Never Mind the Buzzcocks reading poems?
Not quite. Jupitus's introductions to the poems take up more time than the poems themselves. The show is two parts anecdote to one part verse.

I want my money back.
Good luck with that. The show is part of the Free Fringe. Or as Jupitus introduces it, "it's not worth the money you're not going to give me."

Sounds like a good deal.
It is. While Jupitus's poems – some old, some new – don't attain the standard of his professed heroes John Hegley and Ivor Cutler, they're usually enjoyable.

Examples please.
His 80s-era ditty They're All Grown Up in the Beano, about the adult lives of comic characters, is of its era in all the right ways: punchy, chippy, funny. His White Hunter, Black Vest is a droll vignette about a "kitchen Hemingway" swatting a fly.

Sounds like a great act to support, say, Madness or Billy Bragg.
Funny you should say that. That's what Porky the Poet did in the 80s, as Jupitus relates here in both anecdote and verse. On Supporting Madness is a rhyming horror story about an unhappy tour he undertook with Suggs and co.

Name dropper.
And some. The central section of the show is his extended tale (too extended – Jupitus doesn't half string it out) of meeting McCartney and the Stones. It's a relief when he ends the preamble, and recites the poems.

And how's the newer material?
So-so. It's hard to see what his poem about George Stephenson's rejected inventions ("the all-purpose, dog-mounted Frenchman botherer" etc) has to do with the "mouth-feel" – relish of words – that Jupitus claims to love in poetry. But there's a sweet closer about his friendship with Hegley. There were meant to be songs, too, but a guitar string broke.

Songs, too? Now that's what I call value for no money.
Give this man the TS Eliot prize immediately.