This is Craig Charles’ 1998 poetry collection, No Other Blue, transcribed just because I love the work and would like it to be more easily available. I believe it’s out of print, but feel free to stop me.

The stanza breaks may not be as intended – some of these are illustrated (and I’m too lazy to upload scans, sorry) with the lines broken up to fit the illustrations, so in those cases I’m making my best guess.

Some poems have author’s notes from CC, which I’ve included.

I like writing poems

I like writing poems
But it’s getting me down
Because I can’t put my pencil down.

I like writing poems
But it gets in the way.
Addicted to write
A poem every day.

Why do I always reach for the pen?
To tell everyone that I’m unhappy again.
Why do I instinctively write down in verse
The most mundane things, both tiresome and terse?

I wish that my pencil knew all that I think
And would write it down for me, whilst I have a drink.

---

George McGee

I feel sorry for old George McGee because George was actually one of my decent classmates. I changed the name of the real culprit because he was doubly likely to sue.

I knew this kid at school,
By the name of George McGee
He was always passing wind and
Blaming it on me.

He’d hit me in the classroom
And he’d hit me in P.E.
Like he’d wait for me to get the ball
When we were playing in the gym
He’d either push me over
Or kick me in the skin

He was that sort of kid.
The sort of kid who cheats at conkers.
It wasn’t totally his faul though –
His family were bonkers.
His dad did his homework once,
It made me a jealous sight –
That was until he got his book back
And found out he wasn’t right

He was that sort of kid.
The sort of kid who washes hamsters in vim.
The doctors took him away, and did some tests on him.

I hadn’t seen George from that day to this
Until, despite my pleading,
The little sneak
– On tuesday week –
He pulled me up for speeding.

---

I want to feel your bum

This was one of my earliest efforts and actually won a poetry competition. It always amused me writing a love poem that started with the opening line…

I want to feel your bum,
But I know you’ll slap my hand.
And every time I see you smile,
It makes my alter ego stand.
I want to kiss your lips,
But I’m scared about my breath.
I want to hold your hand,
But I’m half frightened to death.
I want to drop formalities
And let my fingers roam,
But my mum’s
Banging on the ceiling
Telling me
To take you home.
I want to take you to the pictures
But your study’s in the way.
And leaving can be grieving
When you always want to stay.
I want to marry you this instant
And let my feelings delve.
But my dad said I’ll have to wait,
Because I’m only twelve.

---

Shipwreck my soul

Ever since Dylan Thomas wanted to shipwreck his soul between someone else’s thighs, I’ve been looking for places to shipwreck mine. The girl in question was a computer programmer, hence the software in my softness.

I want a cold pebble beach,
I want sea in your hair,
I want salt and sand on your skin.
I want to bathe my hands in the waves of your hair,
And bathe your body all tight and trim
And shipwreck my soul in your eyes.

I want to see you dressed real minimalist,
In lycra and in lace
The cool damp cotton towel
Can wipe mascara from your face
And I will shipwreck my soul in your eyes.

‘Cause you’re pretty in lace and satin and silk
You’re mine.
That’s not to say I own you,
Just a time share holding.

She’s pretty, she’s pale, she’s soft, she’s warm, she’s clean,
She’s the computer rash in my machine
Affecting mind and motion, thought and deed,
And wherewithall
My love.
Where, with all my love.

---

Brewer’s droop

I wrote this on the sea wall at Llandudno after an unsuccessful attempt to consummate the relationship with my (little did I know then) soon-to-be ex -wife.

I can’t feel that feeling any more.
The tingle doesn’t tingle
Underneath my overalls.
Embarrassment and panic
Shame when you think it’s
Getting hard again, it doesn’t
It just limps a bit and falls.

You just don’t know
The place to look
When you find you can’t get it up
And the feelings just don’t feel the same
When the fingers stroke again,

Again,

And
I can’t make
My burner flame
From tip to top to core.

The tension tends to aggravate
When you find that you can’t copulate
And your tingle
Cannot mingle
Any more.

And your ego can’t kick-start and go
If you can’t make those juices flow.
And you know, I know, we all know
A man – is not a man
Without a spanner in his hand.

And you feel, I feel
We all feel
This need to overpower
To turn on
And deflower
But it’s hard
Without the power
In your loins.

Or it isn’t hard
Without the power
In your loins.

And it might just get to irritate
When you find that you can’t fornicate
When your arrow is bowed instead of straight
And you can’t get that friction in your groin.

And it’s easy for you to say:
‘Where there’s a willy
Then there’s usually a way.’
But that statement is easily said
When the thing’s all wrinkly and dead,
And it’s not that firm, upright and bold
And my balls are crinkly and cold.

But I suppose it’s pretty funny
That in this land of milk and money
It’s too much to touch the burning crutch
Of your true intended honeybunch.

And she says she loves me,
She knows I’m competent
Love is a many-splendoured thing,
– It sometimes makes you impotent.

And she holds me close
And she bathes my wounds
And she kisses me, and then –
The lantern lights
Light up her eyes
And I’m sure
It’s getting hard again.

---

Halt

Written in the late eighties after the post-mortem on the 1981 riots had supplied vast areas of our major cities with ‘community policemen’. Performed in this version on Channel 4’s Black on Black and later reworked for Saturday Night Live.

Halt! who goes there?
Asked the policeman.
Don’t you know it’s getting late?
Have you been running, nigger?
– You do look in a state!
Where’ve you been to, nignog
– Where’re you going –
What’s your name?
Answer me you little animal,
I’m not playing a game!

He hit me on the head and I started to cry
Operation eagle eye.

Empty out your pockets –
Let’s have a look inside.
We can do it at the station,
If you really want the ride.
Have you been in trouble with the police before?
Have you broken any ancient law?
In the riots I was hit by a nignog
I think it’s time to even the score.

Get into the car! he said,
Before I tan your hide,
And he grabbed me by the shoulder
And he pushed me clear inside,
He said –

Show me some identity
To prove you’re you instead of me.
I looked in the wing-mirror,
I said, that’s me.

He said, that’s pretty funny,
Sonny,
Laugh, it’s a bust!
Then he said,
You’ve been sussed.
You’ve been thieving,
Haven’t you?
Come on, where’ve you stashed the cash?
Don’t be a smartarse,
Answer when you’re asked!
A couple of streets away an old lady’s been attacked
Open those rubber lips, my son,
Or you might just take the rap.

All of a sudden, the radio came through.
I don’t know what was said.
Those things are
Hard to understand.
But he pushed me out of the car with the back of his hand, and said:
I’ll see you later.
And zoomed off up the street.

So I shrugged my shoulders
And took to my feet.
Walking along the pavement,
All in one piece –
After another confrontation with community police.

---

I hate the way…

Written from my remand cell in Wandsworth prison. I was trying to parallel the way a spouse would feel after many years of wedlock… lock being the operative word.

I hate the way you sleep.
The clucking
and the bucking
and the grinding
of your teeth.

And by the way,
I hate the way you breathe.

I hate the way you eat,
The slopping
and the popping
and the sucking
of your teeth.

And can I say,
I hate the way you speak.

I hate the way you wash,
The way you hold the flannel,
The bucket and the mop.

Being with you never –
Ever –
Ever seems to stop,
It just goes on –
And on –
And on –
And on –

I’m driven to despair.

And by the way I hate the way
You’re always –
Bloody –
There.

You’re getting in my way, you’re on my nerves,
I’ve got a notion –

Solitary confinement
Could be seen as a promotion.

---

Bully for you

Prison is full of psychos, and that’s just the people work there! Says it all really…

I only had a tin of tuna and a bottle of Quosh,
When a peabrain with a keychain
And a little wooden cosh
Comes into my cell,
And goes, bosh

We got couriers in cannabis,
Smuggling in pot,
Someone’s put it on you, man,
It’s coming out on top,
You’ve got yourself into a spot.

He dug through my detritus then,
His wrists were in my slop.
Trying to intimidate,
To make me have a pop
So he could finish me off
Down the block.

A PP9 battery in a plain brown sock.
The doc don’t come when you knock
When they finish you off down the block.

The man was bad, mean; but dead keen
And lived behind a smoke screen
Life a series of doors that he’s gotta keep locked.
Nasty,
Snidey,
Uneasy,
And untidy
A petty little bigot who never gets shocked.

Accustomed to the violence,
The conspiracy of silence,
The poxy little victories, and shoddy little knocks.
They’re gonna finish me off down the block.

---

He lit a cigarette

This poem started life as a song called ‘Open Up’ on the BMG / RCA label for a singer called Suzanne Rhatigan. The album bombed, but I hope not because of the words!

He lit a cigarette with a lighter from Spain,
Two weeks in Malaga – eight days of rain.
He had a gold-capped tooth and a rolled-gold chain.
She knew things would never be the same.

She wore stiletto heels
All scuffed with dirt,
An ankle bracelet
And a miniskirt.
Although she wore a watch, she asked him the time,
As she secretly undressed him in her mind.
All the time secretly wishing she had no inhibitions.

Nine am on a twosday, tired and grey,
She couldn’t think of anything to say.
The bus was crowded so they had to stand,
When he accidentally
Touched her
With his hand.

She felt a shiver shimmy down her spine,
Took a deep breath, and took her time.
She said, it’s nothing.
He said, you’re far too kind,
As he secretly undressed her in his mind.
All the time secretly wishing
He had no inhibitions.

Around nine thirty-five
They rolled into reception.
There was tension and desire
As they signalled their intention
They were touching on the newness
Of a tentative connection.

They touched the power

In a room so often rented by the hour.

---

Yuppy

This poem was written in the mid-eighties at the height of the yuppy boom. I hope and pray that the poem lasts longer than the subject matter. It was performed on a variety of TV shows and was an intregal part of my first-ever one-man show which premièred in Edinburgh in 1986 and then toured the world.

He’s got a Rolex watch
And a filofax
So that he can correlate his facts.
He gets anxiety attacks.
He’s doing well, but he can’t relax
‘Cos he’s a yuppy.

He’s got a GTI,
His girlfriend looks like Lady Di,
With a briefcase
That contains the face,
Time out, and bloody ‘Ell
French elle
And English elle
As well,
‘Cos he’s a yuppy.

He likes caviare on French bread,
And likes French cheese and pickles,
He’s got inexhaustible supplies of pink and white shirts
That he bought from Harvey Nichols.
He’s a yuppy,

He’s a guy you’ll like,
He works off excess energy
On an excess energy exercise bike,
The excessive executive,
Exclusive and extreme.
He doesn’t want to be a never-was,
He doesn’t want to be a has-been.
But he has been seen,
Reading Harpers & Queen
In an Italian pizzeria
In the Covent Garden area
‘Cos he’s a yuppy.

He’s Gucci,
Pucci,
Fiorucci,
His girlfriend shops at Nina Ricci.
His favourite food was fettuccini,
But now he’s gone all Japanesey –
He does karate,
He eats sushi,
And drinks sake,
‘Cos he’s a yuppy.

He lives in a world of Porsches,
Fuel-injection turbos and gasoline.
He lives in a world of finance,
Corporate business pressure and amphetamine.
And when he goes home,
He talks a bit of business
He comes before she’s finished,
And he doesn’t understand
Why she always moans when he comes home.
Life to him is an empty glass
And an ashtray overfull.
He’s never been exciting
So he’s never ever dull
When he comes home.

She lives in a world of lotions,
Waging war against her wrinkles with beauty cream
Well-assorted potions rubbed into her body
So she’s soft and clean.
And when she’s not home
She shops in all the boutiques
Never keeps her receipts
And she doesn’t understand
Why he always moans when he comes home.
Life to her is a bubble bath
And private bank accounts
She pays for wealth with happiness
And that’s a serious amount
When they are home.

---

Hypothermia

Saturday Night Live allowed me to give this poem its first airing around the time that pensioners were dropping like flies and being discovered by postmen delivering heating grants from the government. If ever the Conservative ministers look back, they may consider this one of their darkest hours.

It’s got so cold I’ve caught the flu,
I go out without gloves, and my fingers turn blue,
I go to the shops and I go to the shows,
And snot keeps dripping out of everybody’s nose.
It’s all anoraks and duffle-coats, woolen scarfs and mitts.
It’s been here for far too long and now it’s
Getting on my nerves.

I’ve got an affliction, I’ve got a disease –
The snot won’t stop, the sneeze won’t ease.
And it’s easy for you to say,
That’s how it goes,
But it doesn’t, it stays,
I’ve caught one of those.

But I can handle it –
I’m a big strong strapping lad.
It’s not the flu that’s making me mad –
It’s the press reports we’ve had.
You see, it seems people die
When the weather turns dull.
It’s like an annual seal cull.

And it might be a grandma of yours that’s freezing,
Sitting there shivering in layers of old clothes.
Worrying because the cost of heating’s getting higher,
Wishing she could feel her fingers or her toes.
Now, you must remember granny,
The one who struggled through the war.
Now final reminders she’s alive
Come flooding through the door.
While the ones who send the bills out
Live in a centrally heated flat,
The old are wrapped in blankets
As they watch the thermostat.

When I was a kid – which wasn’t long ago,
Winter meant skates, and snowball fights.
If you got one in the face,
It wasn’t very nice,
But you could handle it.
You built snowmen,
And gave them potato eyes,
A carrot for his nose was the usual trick.
Kids these days use the carrot
For his dick, and the potatoes –
Well, who knows.

My grandparents must have done that too
When they were young and sprightly.
I wonder if they realised
That it would come to this,
That they’d be hanging onto
Life so tightly.

I wonder if they realised
That after all those years of work
Their pensions would just about keep them fed.
And heating allowances applied for long before
Would start arriving
Three days after they were dead

And it makes my blood boil
When these cold-hearted tricks
Get given new identities
And re-labelled: Economics

You see, there must be
Heat for homes in winter –
No matter what the cost
Or is the Conservative Party Chairman
The Right Honourable Jack Frost?

---

Family way

Written in my first bedsit, aged seventeen. It’s Liverpool early eighties through and through.

Mother sits alone and knits
Bonny boots for auntie’s newborn baby.
Father sits alone and spits
Right into the grate,
And tells my mum
To shift her bum
– The dinner’s getting late.
And our Jimmy’s coming home in Spring
– Did eighteen months for robbing things
Like houses, cars and wedding rings,
And all those things
That are inbetween.
And our Julie’s in the club again,
And when she’s asked
I’m sure she’ll say
She has no luck with men.
And when I’m asked
I’m sure I’ll say
That I’ve been in
The family way.

My dad took me aside and said:
‘Don’t dare go down the pier head –
The ships have gone, the water’s black,
With dirty men, with long black macs
Weaving dirty drunken tracks,
And leaving dirty drunken paths.’
But I guess my dad just can’t relax
Since he got sacked.
For thirty years he broke his back
Till work got slack.
And now he goes
And drinks his dole
In public houses
Battered by the times.
And mum wakes up and cries at home
And grandma calls her on the phone,
And when she’s asked, I’m sure she’ll say
That she’s been in the family way.
And when we’re asked, I’m sure we’ll say
We’ve all been in the family way.

Our Julie’s only seventeen,
She works in some launderette.
She doesn’t like it very much –
It’s all that she could get.
She’s getting married pretty soon,
All dressed in virgin white.
Mother said that’s what she’d like –
She wants her kids to do it right.
So our Jimmy stole
A wedding ring,
So she could have
The real thing.
And he got caught
And that’s what
Bad luck brings.
And when he’s asked
I’m sure he’ll say
That he’s been in
The family way.

---

No other blue

I tried to wrap this poem up in colours and flowers, using colours and flowers as names. It’s sugary, syrupy and sentimental, but I’m proud of every saccharine-coated crystal.

I want rosy days, dozy days,
That start in the mist
And the morning haze,
And finish with kisses, and cuddles and you,
With eyes of no other blue.

I want lazy days, daisy days,
Chaffinches, churchbells
And songs of praise,
That finish with kisses, and cuddles, and you,
With skies of no other blue.

I want spring in your step,
And a kiss on your lips,
Bad weather could never ever eclipse
Those rosy days
When I love you to bits,
When I reach out and give you
A great big beautiful kiss.

I want funny days, sunny days,
When colours collide like a birthday bouquet,
I want lily and lilac, violet and jade,
A golden brown sky at the end of those days,
And finish with kisses, and cuddles and you,
Whispering words of no other blue.

---

In the city

In the city
Dirty brick walls and painted lamp-posts,
As I walk down streets with
Dirty gutters and cracked-up pavements,
And broken, battered chipshop shutters,
Nazi signs and
Bedroom windows,
Rusty garden gates off their hinges, and
Doorsteps where all the moss grows, and
Windworn alleys where
All the wind blows
In the city.
The milkmen drive armoured cars
‘Cos the bricks break the bottles
When the kids go to school,
And graffiti on the wall says:
Anarchy rules
And no-one’s in when the gasman calls,
No housewives in aprons,
No men in overalls.
Some kid
In the street
Screams and bawls
In the city.

---

Consultants

This was written during the riots of 1981. I was seventeen and, dare I say it, Molotov-friendly.

Consulting his notebook,
He said:
It’s funny how niggers
Don’t show bruises.
And to demonstrate the point
He kicked me in the head
And my body didn’t move.

It was an interesting experiment
They had something to prove.
To determine the difference
Between black skin and white
They spoke at length
About relative thickness
And tensile strength
And how bruises don’t show on the black,
And the thin blue line stood back
To allow the scientist to proceed.

It’s funny how niggers
Don’t show bruises.
But if you kick me enough
I bleed.

---

Interracial sex

Written for Saturday Night Live on the day they legalised interracial sex in South Africa. I performed it to an electrified audience who each time answered my doubts in the affirmative! Whilst compiling this book I contacted the South African embassy in London asking for the exact date of the legalisation. They were unable to recall it and have not got back to me. Change?

It’s on the news
It’s in the press –
They’ve legalised interracial sex.

I wonder if the Africans were
Really impressed?
Undid their shirts, took off their keks
And went and had a party.
I doubt it. Don’t you?

Did the authorities think
That they’d stop the unrest?
There’d be black civil rights leaders too out of breath
To organise a demo, or choose to mourn a death,
Because they’d been too busy having interracial sex?
I doubt it. Don’t you?

Will there be sex in punishment, sex in pain,
Sex in bondage, sex in chains,
Sex with women, sex with men?
Will they be doing it again and again and again?
I doubt it. Don’t you?

Or is it just another whitewash,
Just another con?
Everybody’s happy,
But the killing still goes on.
I think so. Don’t you?

---

Blood on a white flag

This Falkland Islands poem was written on the day the Sun pronoucned ‘Victory’ on its cover.

Blood on a white flag,
Gently bleeding in the wind
And tint grains of sand
Are all that you can find
To hide behind.

Medals flash like photographs,
And deep inside the bunker
A teenage soldier asks
For brandy or whisky,
Some spirit to ease the pain.

And the general says, ‘Be still keep quiet,
They’re attacking us again.’

So the spirit left
And deep inside the gloom
Of a decomposing room
They pinned onto his bloody chest a medal.

Then they wrapped his head in paper,
And put him in the rain.

The pain;
Don’t forget the pain.
You’ll never be
Innocent again.

---

Flesym

In my infrequent bursts of blind religion,
I throw my hands to god
And I let the dreary rhythm of the dead
Excite my fingertips.

But sometimes when the vision slips
I see the opened coffins stood on end
And the devil fires his gun
My god is gone.

On my half-hearted trips back home
I let my mother eat me with her hairy lips
Whilst I return back to the womb
And, safe inside familiar walls
I sleep in peace at last.

In my special moments
Of everloving tenderness
I pull my woman close
And pour my heart into her ear like wine.

But in my pristine moments
Of brass-breasted arrogance
I curl my fists into a ball
And watch the wrinkled knuckles
As they progressively turn white
And stretching, crack the scabs
That seal my dead blood tight.

In my reflective moods of self-indulgence
I intrude upon myself and hear me sleeping
And creeping for the lock
Escape and rest a while.

But in my self-important moods
Of concioence or conceit
I turn my pen to paper, and
Secrete across the page like a rushing slug.

In my self-eluding trips of alcohol abuse
I feel hate, jealousy, greed
And I shove the imagined borders
Of my mind aside
And invite them in to bleed.

Whilst in the stagnant moments of my calm
After exploding into anger like a beaten drum.
I interfere with words
And with some fine mystique
Maybe molest them
Into beauty.

---

It’s strange

This was written for the BBC drama The Marxmen. Instead of a theme tune they wanted to use a poem and I was comissioned to supply it. Lucky me, I also played the part of a murderer.

It’s strange that we go through life
not daring to commit a touch
and settle for so very little
when we’ve longed for so very much.

It’s strange the way we think of god
as someone upstairs in the sky
who doesn’t care that in the basement
the law is an eye for an eye.

It’s strange that in the confusion
the hunter is the prey
and revenge and retribution
are the order of the day.

And it’s strange the way we go through life
not daring to commit a touch
and settle for so very little
when we’ve longed for so very much.

Oh, God
Would that I could concede
And rest in thee.

---

Inverness

The slip of the moss through
The trickle of water,
The glistening boulders lie
Still in their pools,
Pine cones are open and
Welcoming summer,
We comb the brook,
Brush the mud off our shoes;
Fool’s gold and quartz in the
Crystal-clear stillness,
Time slipping by just like
Water through fingers,
The waterfall’s higher
Up above in the distance,
We climb side by side, and
As god is my witness,
I look in your eyes and
I drown in the blueness.
Inverness.

---

New life

My mother died of cancer months before the birth of my son in 1988. But it wasn’t until the mid nineties that I finally put pen to paper and wrote this poem.

I didn’t want to hear you calling my name.
I didn’t want to see you cry.
I hope you knew the reason why
I couldn’t look you in the eye
At all.

I saw you try to bite the hand that fed you
Coloured pills to ease the pain.
Pills to wash away the sins of modern scientific brains, I thought.
The medicines redundant lay on the bedside table.
I don’t know if you noticed, but you squeezed my hand
And led me to a new life.

I try my best to think of you when
Happy, but the memories are lame.
I never wished I could feel pain,
Wished I was innocent again
Until now.
I never wished I was a child again.Until I grew up too soon.
Until I saw the hungry tears,
Until I kissed the wetted mouth goodbye.

The doctors and the nurses,
The bedclothes and the linen.
They finally pulled the curtain.
And you squeezed my hand
And led me
To a new life.

---

More to come thrill-seekers….. you’ll know I’m done transcribing when we get to ‘Near-perfect minutes’.