...she took us out on a motor ride to a beach, it was a nudist camp.....What those people do on their time off is their own business, the dirty basta… - John Cooper Clarke

[on his Dad] He didn't share the general public's dim view of the late Joseph Stalin.

All my life, all I wanted to be was a professional poet. To me being a professional poet was better than notching up a hat trick at Old Trafford.....You get to wear fine clothes and perfume and nobody pulls you up on it. You get out of bed late in the day and nobody calls you a lazy bastard. A state of reverie and the virtue of idleness are paramount. Any poet will tell you this.

I always judge people by appearances; don't you anyway? I think clothes are important; that's where the nudist camp falls down.