Photo credit:  Tony Hardacre
Photos with enlargements - see gallery.

Roger McGough, 'a trickster you can trust', is one of Britain's best-loved poets and a poetry party-thrower of distinction.

Top-selling The Mersey Sound with Brian Patten and Adrian Henri, hits with The Scaffold and club dates with GRIMMS led to an acclaimed body of books, broadcasts and gigs.

Just out in Penguin Modern Classics...

A 40^th anniversary celebration of the revolutionary The Mersey Sound Penguin Modern Poets No.10. With its publication in 1967, the late Adrian Henri & team turned verse on its head and filled college & theatre gigs to capacity up & down the country. Since then, one million copies have been sold, making it the country’s best-selling anthology of verse. Penguin Modern Classics re-publish the collection this year  -  the ultimate accolade. The beat goes on with Southbank Centre on Tour's 40-Love when Roger & Brian each read their Top Twenty most requested poems.

New autobiography Said And Done (Century) explores overnight fame with Lily The Pink, The Scaffold and Yellow Submarine which he helped write for The Beatles. He encounters Bob Dylan, John Lennon, Marlon Brando, Allen Ginsberg, Pete McCarthy and Salman Rushdie amongst others. 

Latest volume of verse Selected Poems (Penguin) joins the mighty Collected Poems (Penguin) and, for children, All The Best and The Bees Knees (both Puffin). 

Roger McGough O.B.E. was recently honoured with the Freedom of the City of Liverpool and earlier this year with a C.B.E. He currently hosts Poetry Please. It's a party alright. 

Poetry Sheriff McGough won his spurs & lasso with Liverpool cowboys Brian Patten & the late Adrian Henri in the all-time best selling, bronco busting modern poetry collection, The Mersey Sound. 

Hit prairie band The Scaffold followed with gauchos John Gorman & Mike McCartney to produce anthems Lily The Pink & Thank U Very Much.

Refusing to dismount gracefully, McGough rounded up Andy Roberts, Neil Innes, Zoot Money, Gorman, McCartney & Patten to terrorise an innocent college & club circuit with the surreal & splendid GRIMMS. The jailhouse has never been busier.

'a word juggler who never misses a catch' Charles Causley