John Cooper Clarke's working-class Mancunian drawl might describe a life lived in the northwest of England (Salford, Lancashire, to be precise), but these days he lives in Essex, about an hour's drive east of London, "or 45 minutes should you catch the train".
And though it comes as no surprise that the performance poet is not short of a word or two even if it is closing in on midnight at his home, what's more evident is the razor-sharp wit he wields at such a late hour.
No wonder he's survived on stage so long.
About halfway through our conversation, asked if his schooling was a particularly important component in his poetic lifecycle, Clarke offers a deadpan reply: "Well, yeah. I learnt to read there, didn't I?"
The thing with Clarke is there's no malice in the mirth.
Well, not on this occasion at least. In fact, it seems his biggest target when "taking the mickey" is himself.
I check his age: "Born in 1949, you must be around 63 ..."
"Yeah, thanks for bringing that up. You're as old as you look."
Speaking of looks, Clarke doesn't seem to have changed much - in photos at least - since his younger days. He has maintained a trademark style, comprising oh-so-sharp boots, pants verging on punk-prototype stovepipes, an assortment of tailored shirts and jackets, all of which is capped off by a hairstyle not unlike his poems: almost out of control, designed to catch attention.
"Fortunately - touch wood - I haven't lost me hair," Clarke responds (before admitting he does dye it black).
"I ought to be in the Stones. I'm Ronnie Wood's decoy. Still, there are worse 60-year-olds to look like, you know what I mean? It's weird about the look thing. Our dads never had to change their look when they got to a certain age. In their generation, they were a schoolboy, then they were a bloke.
"If you spend your whole life dressing a certain way, having your hair cut a certain way, it seems weird then to sit down at a certain point of your life and think, 'I'm going to have to completely change this now'.
"What a weird thing to do."
Still, this conversation was never going to be about clothes, though (excuse the pun) Clarke is back in fashion, helped to a large extent by his name being dropped by, among others, singer Alex Turner, of the Arctic Monkeys, who cites the poet's work as inspiration for his own narrative lyricism.
Clarke has also appeared as himself in the 2007 film Control, about the life and death of Joy Division singer Ian Curtis, and had his poem "Evidently Chickentown" feature in an episode of The Sopranos.
Having last visited New Zealand for the Big Day Out in 2007, Clarke is about to pack his bags for a tour down under, during which he will perform at the Dunedin Fringe Festival on March 21. A quick flick through his itinerary over the coming months reveals a performer in much demand.
"I work all the time. It's my only way of making a living, really. I ain't complaining about it. I enjoy it. The more you do it, the better you get, you know.
"Even though I love this life, I can't be travelling all my life. But how can I plan? I get invited to beautiful places where people adore me," he laughs, again.
"I was lucky. I got put on the GCSE syllabus back in the '90s, so a whole new generation of kids was getting exposed to my work. Among the people who liked it was Alex Turner and that kind of had a knock-on effect.
"It's nice to have a recognition occasionally. It has certainly launched my career again. It has cranked up a gear. When I started doing performance poetry there was no one doing it. I was number one in a field of one."
Clarke recalls he discovered a flair for poetry at the age of 12.
His mother enjoyed it, too, though she didn't start writing poetry until after her son did.
"She must have discovered I was doing it and thought, 'well, how difficult can it be?'. She got really good at it; we both had a shared fondness for John Betjeman," he says, referring to the late British poet laureate.
"Don't get me wrong - my family never sat around discussing poetry. I'd hate to give you the wrong impression of the kind of family life I had growing up. But my mum did have a fondness for poetry even though she wasn't middle-class and suburban."
Clarke also gained early stimulation from a high school teacher, John Malone, who "was inspiring, but not in any creepy, Robin Williams kind of way", he says, nodding to that American actor's starring role in the film Dead Poets Society.
"Mr Malone conveyed an enthusiasm for poetry. No, that's not quite the right word. It was cooler than that. He conveyed a love for 19th-century Romantic poetry. But he was a real tough guy. There was this dichotomy of this really tough guy enamoured with the works of Shelley and Coleridge."
(When not espousing a passion for poetry, the same teacher would take physical education classes where he would occasionally throw his glass eye into the swimming pool and urge pupils to race for it.)
After leaving school, Clarke held down various jobs, including working as an apprentice engineer, a lab technician at Salford University and also a lead-type compositor.
After a brief marriage, and a stint living in Dorset, he returned to Manchester and began reciting poetry at clubs and venues around the city.
He recalls, with a mixture of fondness and fear, those early days, when he did the rounds of northern workingmen's clubs.
"They were the tough ones. I did them before I did any of the punk gigs.
That's where I started out, doing the men's clubs and cabaret places in Manchester, places like that. After that, punk rock was a piece of piss.
"There was one thing you could bank on in those workingmen's clubs, one thing you could be sure of, and that was none of the audience was particularly interested in poetry. Get the hard work out of the way first; it makes everything that happens after that seem like a doddle. I think I did it the right way round.
"You become focused. You cut out the s*** I write lots of different kinds of poetry, but I'm quite judicious about what I put in a live show. As they say, it's show business."
Like many who attempt to make a living from standing alone on stage and delivering words about the everyday and absurd, Clarke admits it can be a nerve-racking experience.
"There is nothing die-hard about me. If there is anything I hate it is embarrassment. So touch wood, I've been lucky.
Give it three minutes and people usually like it. But I've been skilful, too. It's a mixture of skill and luck.
"You learn exactly how much of an attention span a collection of people have. It's all very elemental stuff. I'm not saying I do anything special; I'm sure anyone who has been doing this as long as I have would develop the same skills eventually."
Asked if he has managed to develop a thick skin over time, Clarke puts it another way:
"Me? Tough? Well, it's like people who are good scrappers, who are good at punching. I've known a few hard men in my time and they are like that because they are terrified of not being first. You just make sure it ain't gonna happen.
"I can't countenance the idea of being on stage and falling on my arse. I can't think of a worse level of embarrassment. If you thought about that for more than three seconds you'd just quit."
There was a time when Clarke did quit. After striking success in the late 1970s when he toured with many of punk rock's seminal bands, including the Sex Pistols, Buzzcocks, the Fall as well as Siouxsie and the Banshees, he succumbed to a heroin addiction that lasted more than a decade. Living with Nico (of Velvet Underground fame) for a time, Clarke's vibrant voice went quiet.
"It was enough to put a stop to any career. That was it," he reflects. "You are on a shelf ... Ask anybody who has had a drug problem: you try [to get clean] and fail; you try and fail ... until you get lucky. I was in and out of clinics and things. It's a long time ago now; it's like thinking about another person."
Clarke has been writing about happier times more recently.
His current favourite poem is titled "I've Fallen In Love With My Wife". Think of it as a droll take on the Chris Knox classic Not Given Lightly.
Penned last year, it is on the setlist for his forthcoming visit, he promises, along with other newbies such as "Idiot's Journal" and "Living The Dream". Whether he'll let fly with early crowd favourite "Twat" remains to be seen.
"There are loads, actually," he enthuses, which is hardly surprising given he has released several albums and published a collection of poetry, 1981's Ten Years In An Open-Necked Shirt.
He says he has plans "I'm overdue" - for another collection.
Clarke says he doesn't attempt to take aim at particular trends or fads ("I don't write like that, never did; I'll just take a subject and write around it until an angle presents itself ..."), yet he has, in fact. Take, for instance, the martial arts craze of the 1970s, which prompted him to write "Kung Fu International" in 1979.
"At the time Carl Douglas was riding high (with Kung Fu Fighting), David Carradine was on TV with that weekly series Kung Fu and Bruce Lee was on at the cinema ... I thought I had to get in on the act in a poetic way.
"But I'm not anti - I don't have a position on it when I start writing. Then things jump out of the mix. It's really about the mix of music and words. Some things make sense without you thinking about them too deeply, like that song Smokestack Lightning by Howlin' Wolf. You know what that's about before hearing the song; it's about railroads ... that's poetry.
"A poem isn't about something; it is an object in and of itself. You either get it or you don't."
Clarke admits he's a little wary about a forthcoming documentary on his life. Titled Evidently John Cooper Clarke, it's due to be screened on BBC4 in the next couple of months and will also be available as a digital download and on DVD.
"Yeah, they've been following me around, filming me do what I do - both on and off stage. Then they talk to a few celebrities about me. It's all carefully considered adoration."
Laughter aside, Clarke is a man well-acquainted with the potential power of punctuation.
He expresses concern the doco might be regarded as a full-stop to his career.
"It's like carrying my own tombstone around with me.
"Actually, maybe there are a few more things that are going to happen. I'm a living man; I've got work to do."
Catch him
John Cooper Clarke performs at the Dunedin Fringe Festival (Sammy's) on March 21. He will be supported by Martin Phillipps, who will play a short set of rare and obscure songs from the Chills' back catalogue.
