Summary
John Cooper Clarke, poetry's Punk Laureate, nominates Salvador Dali, the surrealist behind melting clocks, lobster telephones, and that trademark moustache.
Matthew Paris asks whether Dali was a genius artist or just a gifted marketeer of his own brand image, who latterly embraced commercialism.
"Both" comes the resounding answer from his champion John Cooper Clarke and the art historian Professor Dawn Ades, who recalls meeting the artist when just she just rang his doorbell in Figueres, Catalonia, back in 1968.
Producer: Mark Smalley
First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in 2013.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Once you've wrapped up this podcast, how about trying a very British cult? |
| 0:06.0 | What happens if the person you trust with your future isn't what you think they are? |
| 0:10.0 | I did feel the whole time he was watching me Yeti. I saw a footprint and that really gave me gusmas. |
| 0:16.4 | Or people who knew me. Emme, I remember every secret, every lie. I'm the only one who knows the truth. |
| 0:23.0 | Discover more of our biggest podcast from 2003. |
| 0:27.0 | Listen on BBC Sounds. |
| 0:29.0 | Great Lives is a download from Radio 4. |
| 0:32.0 | We hope you enjoy what you're about to hear. |
| 0:35.0 | Hello, I'm joined today by The Bard of Salford, the People's Punk Lariat, John Cooper Clark. |
| 0:44.0 | Like Ian Dury, he rode the new wave of the late 1970s. |
| 0:49.0 | Pipe cleaner thin, his machine gun delivery of slices of mancunian life were not quite what the Manchester |
| 0:55.6 | tourist information of his wanted to print because they reek of authentic urban decay. |
| 1:01.6 | Still going strong, dressed in black with buffon big hair today and shades, |
| 1:06.7 | Johns memorably described himself as having the complexion of a compulsive blood donor. |
| 1:12.4 | He's brought us classic poems such as Beasley Street and |
| 1:15.5 | Chicken Town which can be found on the G.C.S. E. English syllabus. Vince the aging savage betrays |
| 1:22.3 | no kind of life but the smell of yesterday's cabbage |
| 1:25.4 | and the ghost of last year's wife through a constant haze of deodorant sprays you can hear him say |
| 1:31.2 | retreat hard dogs dug the dirty days down the middle of |
| 1:37.4 | Beasley Street. John welcome the great life whom you've chosen is pictured in a photograph that we all have sitting |
| 1:45.8 | next to us here in the studio of an extraordinary looking fellow with bulging eyes and gravity-defying |
| 1:52.1 | mustache. It's twizzled ends pointing upwards. |
... |
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