Roger McGough, new Poetry Society President

The UK Poetry Society, whose recent doings we covered here and here, has a new president in Roger McGough, according to this Guardian article.

A bit more on "the patron saint of poetry":

Roger McGough, the one-time pop star with the Liverpool band The Scaffold – famed for its 1968 Christmas No1 Lily the Pink – has been drafted in as the new president of the beleaguered Poetry Society.

The society said McGough, dubbed the "patron saint of poetry" by Carol Ann Duffy, would provide "a serious depth of experience, vitality and irrepressible wit".

He will also be the first president of the society to have had a string of top ten singles and several appearances on Top of the Pops to his credit, from the days in the late 60s and early 70s when he was a third of the Scaffold with John Gorman and Mike McGear, the brother of the Beatle Paul McCartney. The band were pioneers of performance art, combining poems by McGough, comedy sketches, and rumpty-tumpty songs.

For more, including a poem, make the jump. And here's the jam mentioned above.