EF: Ivor is an associate member of London Zoo and as the weather this week wasn't too bad we decided to meet there. Despite the informal setting, he insisted that we address each other formally.

EF: Do you want a stroke?

IC: A Rabbit?

EF: Mmm . . .

IC: No. Thanks all the same. I've got all these bacteria on my skin and I give them a stroke when I feel like it. . . . . I bet if I wasn't here, you'd be gushing all over them.

EF: I don't gush Mr Cutler

IC: Err . . . . I apologise, Ms Freud

EF: Mr Cutler. I took the liberty of looking through some of your press cuttings before I came to the zoo today

IC: Well, I'm all in favour of people who do their homework.

EF: Oh good . . . . I like the habit that you either used to have or still do have of drawing flowers on the pavement. [Ivor chuckles quietly] Do you still do that?

IC: Well, actually, "used to have". Oh . . . hold on . . . . I love them . . . . When I die, I'm gonna . . . I'm gonna be one of them.

EF: . . . A Marabou Stork! [hint of distaste in voice]

IC: Mmm! . . Err . . It's bald, as you see, with a wee bit of fuzz and they're very bad tempered and they just stand there with there shoulders up and waits (sic).

EF: Do you ever think about dying?

IC: Sure . . all the time. Doesn't everybody? . . . . . I'm bored to death! And I've got to do things to stop myself going nuts. I think if I stop working, that'll be it or [I'll] find a high window to jump out of.

EF: Does that mean that you . . . what are you now? seventy-five?

IC: [in horror] Seventy-five!?!

EF: I'm so sorry . .

IC: [quietly] I'm only eighteen . .

EF: I'm sorry [laughs]

IC: I'm sixty-seven

EF: It wasn't that you look seventy-five, because you don't. Someone told me you were seventy-five.

IC: Bad mouthing me. Huh! [laughs]

EF: Anyway you were telling me about the flowers.

IC: Oh yeah. Well there's all them poo poos on the ground, on the pavements round about, and I got a set of coloured chalks and I drew faces round and then I, 'cause you couldn't do the same thing all the time, that'd be boring, and I made coloured flowers round them to give them sweetness and dignity, you know, and a feeling of being loved, to make them attractive. Because if you're gonna let your dog do that on the pavement, you know, one would assume it was attractive and I was only underscoring the idea. It did cut it down! I think it made them a little ashamed.

EF: Do you ever look at animals, Mr Cutler, and are reminded of people when looking at them?

IC: Oh yeah, and probably more often, I look at people and are reminded of animals and, in fact, I'm rather like a camel from a certain angle.

EF: Gosh! Do you know, you are!

IC: Gee. Thanks Emma! [laughs]

EF: Do I remind you of an animal?

IC: I haven't made up my mind yet.

EF: Would you let me know?

IC: Is it important to you?

EF: It is quite, actually.

IC: Gosh, how insecure you are.

EF: Gee. Thanks Ivor!

IC: [laughs] Oh!. . . . pardon me . . . some aardvarks down there, we can see afterwards.

EF: If you felt, by the way, at any point moved or inspired to break into a poem at the site of any particular animal. . .

IC: There's only one poem I have and it's most unlikely that it's going to be useful. Yeah! It's the only one I can remember.

EF: Which one is it?

IC: I don't know if I want to tell you.

EF: . . Do you like that sheep?

IC: Well, today I like him, but the ones I really like are these Dorset Downs.

EF: Shall we have this poem before we do that?

IC: Oh! The poem! [reads "If Your Breasts"] Now the Dorset Downs. I've written one about them.

EF: Have you?

IC: Mmm. They come up to me at the edge here and they wanted me to become a sheep and join them, and err . . . I was very taken with the idea, but I can't see it at the moment.

EF: Ivor Cutler's latest book is Glasgow Dreamer which is illustrated by Martin Honeysett. Just outside the aardvarks he read us chapter 4

[Ivor reads Glasgow Dreamer Episode 4]