[transcribed from a recording made by John Goddard and passed to me by John Gibbin - Many thanks!]

JW: We live in a time when people buy records or they will go to a small rock club or an arts centre and see you perform, and I find as we were just saying right at the start, [introduction of the interview missing] a new generation is discovering you again and saying "You've gotta go and see this chap, you know. We've found him." They go along . . . and they laugh. A lot of your work is genuinely funny, but do you play for laughs?

IC: [sighs] There you have me. Err . . . I don't know. I mean, if you can imagine me lying at four in the morning, looking grim and wishing I was dead and I pick up the pencil and the paper and I start to write and then I go Hm! hm! hm! hm! (quiet chuckle), you know? something very funny's come up and then I've put the book down and I go back to sleep and have a wee look in the morning to see if it's still funny.

JW: But you have to see yourself as an entertainer [next couple of words indecipherable]

IC: Well, it's almost like I'm a naughty boy, I think . . . I think I am a naughty boy, actually, stickin' my toe out over the line to see what happens.

JW: Most of the people who claim to be writers or poets. These days, very often, don't necessarily write them down. We've had a Walters' Weekly over this couple of years. Very often they've been like the political kind of ranters that we've got at the moment, the declaimers of the John Cooper-Clarke, Attilla The Stockbroker type. Or the ranting rastas, you know, people with some sociological point that they want to make and declaim in a very obvious but forceful manner. Yet, you have always seemed to past generations, slightly subversive. I mean, do you think your work is just looking under the floorboards and poking around and is subversive from that point of view - that it's not what your headmaster would like you to do - or do you feel that you have a political point that you want to get across, now?

IC: . . . . Well, if you ask me about now, then err . . . I think the Greenham Common Women's Protest was the most exciting thing that's politically ever come my way and made me realise that the sooner men were put to one side and women took over, the better, because they seem to have a way of doing it that they don't play at being macho, thay don't have the business of face-saving which seems to be endemic to society . . . . and a few days after the Greenham Common thing I woke up in the night and wrote a song. I didn't, you know, I never know what I'm writing, and I discovered it was a song about the Greenham Common Women ["Women Of The World" - DS] and I'm going to be singing it at the Tricycle [Theatre - Kilburn, London - DS]

JW: Are you going to record it?

IC: Oh yes. That Rough Trade thing ["Privilege" - DS]. If I do the LP I shall certainly do the song.

JW: Are you sort of anti-authoritarian? I mean the Greenham Common thing is a relatively recent manifestation that we can put our fingers on and say "well how do we feel about that event, because, as I say, I first heard your work before twenty years ago. You weren'y at Greenham Common then, but I mean is your stand for freedom and against authority then, to sum up?

IC: For freedom . . . . . . No, that seems to me an over-simplification. I think there are times when one longs for authority. I suppose the best kind of authority is self-authority, but . . .

JW: Yet I've seen you at a performance get very ratty because somebody lit a cigarette on the front row.

IC: I should bloody well think so! Well, [couple of indecipherable words] my throat!

JW: Authority for you . . . He pays his couple of quid or whatever and sits in the front and lights a cigarette. He's enjoying your performance you say [puts on an Ivor voice] "Stop! Stub that cigarette out!"

IC: No, I don't think I would have done it . . . . unless if I said it at the beginning and I think I did and if he come in late, of course, he wouldn't know and I don't like it. Like people with sweetie papers, you know?

JW: [laughs] OK . . . . so you're sort of erm . . . not benevolent despotism or whatever it is, sort of ordered anti-authoritarianism. What is that you're being?

IC: [mad laugh] Gosh! you're very good at taking and twisting everything I say. I don't mean in a nasty sense, but I'm more fascinated by how you take . . . because it's not a lengthy discussion . . and err . . using the information I've given you, you put it together and it sounds slightly different from what I gave out, or because I have the whole of the picture and you only have a part. I'm sorry. May I say that I have a great deal of respect and warmth towards you.

JW: Well, thanks then Ivor Cutler, on that point . . . and what higher point can we finish on? Usually of course, like most poets and writers, I suppose Ivor reveals a great deal of himself through the work. I don't think I've ever heard you talk before about anything other than just reading . . . About your life. But for people who want to know more about Ivor [plugs Ivor's books, records etc.]. What's this say? Large et Puffy is it?

IC: Large ET Puffy. Yes it's a new book of poetry. Same people as Private Habits.

JW: Is it, as in Latin, Large ET Puffy?

IC: It was Large and Puffy, the poem. I thought Large ET Puffy had an edge on it.

JW: And that gave it a bit of distinction . . .

IC: Well, anyone that can translate that would think "Wow," you know, "a Latinist."

JW: [plugs further appearances including Prince Ivor on the 20^th March on BBC Radio Three, in the middle of Aida] Would you like to read us out with a couple of thoughts?

IC: Yes, my first thought is that . . . . er . . . . oh dear it's gone out of my head, so I will have to do without that, here's the second one [reads "An Unhappy Medium" - from Private Habits]