Hi Joe - edit/add/delete as required,,,


2024 - John Watterson(aka Fake Thackray) has the stock of Les Barker's coffee table books.
"These three books contain 147 of his greatest works as well as some fabulous photographs by Les."

https://www.fakethackray.com/les-barker/

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Worth mentioning that John uses Les' poems in his act and wrote a lovely tribute, a la 'The Iceberg'
mudcat.org/thread.cfm?threadid=172042#4184244

RIP Les Barker
On a cold rainy night in a thousand folk clubs
People stand, as if straining to hear
The world was in shock at the loss of a wordsmith
The one they had worshipped for years

They clutched at their hand stapled booklets
To read through what they’d read before
And had heard him recite a thousand times over
Just to join in his punchlines once more

Have you got any news of the poet
I just need to hear him you see
Have you got any news of the poet
He means the whole world to me

Treating all as his sisters and brothers
Life’s furrow alone he would plough
For Les was not like the others,
Les was different somehow

Although most that he wrote was so comic
It had audiences fall off their seats,
His pen was a sword aimed precisely toward
The liars and bullies and cheats

To Trump, to Bush, Blair and Boris
He would call them all out to the end
When you’re a politician so full of bullshit
A poet called Les ain’t your friend

Apparently God needed cheering up
Sometimes, yes, even He gets downcast
So he sent for Les the very accurate wordsmith
And his body of work unsurpassed

So here’s to the bear and the iceberg
To Cosmo and Spot, and mange tout
In the hope that day, we might hear him and say
Déjà vu, Déjà vu, Deja Vu

John Watterson 2023