John Hegley

A greatest hits, best of golden oldies compilation (with some new stuff) from 'Comedy's poet laureate' (Independent).

Poet, comic, singer, songwriter and glasses-wearer, John Hegley has captivated and devastated audiences all over the country, in theatres and festivals, at gigs at the Edinburgh Festival, and with numerous appearances on radio and television. This new compilation shows the breadth of his appeal, with seriously funny, cleverly comic poems on everything from love, family, France, art and the sea to dogs, dads, gods, taxidermy, carrots, spectacles and – of course – potatoes.

His Bloodaxe New & Selected Potatoes includes work from a dozen collections, from Visions of the Bone Idol (1984) to Peace, Love & Potatoes (Serpent's Tail, 2012), plus a generous helping of New Potatoes (2013).

'Fabulously funny' – Time Out.

'Scandalously talented' – Sunday Times.

‘John Hegley is to potatoes what Wordsworth has been to daffodils’ – Observer.

‘A mainstay of the alternative comedy scene… an incurable entertainer’ – Guardian.

‘Consistently plain-speaking yet metaphysical, mordant yet mellifluous, experimental yet traditional…he speaks many a true word in jest…one of our most entertaining and communicative poets’ – Michael Horovitz, Telegraph.

John Hegley: New & Selected Potatoes

No Hegley performance is ever the same. If he doesn’t remember the words to a poem or song, he improvises, making up new lines as he goes along. Thus when he treated us to two poems sung with mandolin in our home recording session in January 2014 at Hegley Mansions in Stoke Newington, a carved wooden dog lying on the table became part of ‘A Declaration of Need’, and ‘Say It Now’ wasn’t said or sung exactly how it was/is printed in the book but how it needed to be sung then, in that moment.

This film by Pamela Robertson-Pearce is from the DVD-anthology In Person: World Poets, filmed & edited by Pamela Robertson-Pearce & Neil Astley (Bloodaxe Books, 2017). The poems he reads or sings are: ‘Some Resolutions’, ‘Taking Out the ‘in it’ and Putting ‘innit’ In It’, ‘Peace, Love and Potatoes’, ‘Glasses Good, Contact Lenses Bad’, I Wouldn’t Say My Brother-in-Law Was Fat, Because He Is Quite Thin’, ‘His Heart’s in the Wrong Place, It Should Be in the Dustbin’, ‘A Dog and a Pigeon’, ‘Max’, ‘A Declaration of Need’ and ‘Say It Now’.

YouTuber: POTATO CLIPS

John Hegley at the Glasgow Comedy Festival

Skip the ad, and you get two poems from his show there, one with a local setting.

John Hegley at Glastonbury

John Hegley sings 'Eddie Don't Like Furniture' with Keith Moore.

Young John is glad to wear glasses

OMG: this is John Hegley from his Word of Mouth TV series recorded in 1990.