John Jelly 1958-2004

Like many people I probably became conscious of John Jelly through his sheer consistency, perseverance and reliability. Walk through Newport Street Passage any weekday between 11am and 1pm and he would be there. It was his pitch. Sensibly placed under cover and strategically located between the Town Hall Square and Ashburner Street market. Always dressed in the same, dark raglan sleeved overcoat, and a battered hat which might have been a trilby once. He had the voice of a Tom Waits, which is to the uninitiated an acquired taste, but he had a good ear for tunes the public would like, the tunes you could hum to, tunes that reminded you that you were connected to the rest of the human race after all. His guitar appeared to have been through many campaigns, and he had the true professional’s disdain for tuning.

I walked into the Man and Scythe, “t’cider ‘ouse” on Churchgate, one evening in 2002, two poems in my coat pocket and two slim paperbacks of favourite poems, as stand-byes. I’d heard or read about the Sunday night Man and Rhyme sessions and had decided to make yet another comeback as an aspiring writer. The last time in 1979, I’d foolishly organised poetry and music events in pubs as part of the first Bolton Festival, but although they were exactly what was lacking in that programme of embalmed haute-couture, I never felt at ease. I wasn’t very self-confident, I wasn’t enough of an exhibitionist then, and I hadn’t invested enough in the Bolton demi-monde to know my way around the people who could make it work. I was saved by a number of fortuitous events. People responded to an appeal in the Evening News, ranging from the 67 year lady who read dialect poems about life in t’mill,  a Jimmy James look alike who recited Albert and the Lion faultlessly, Rivington Spike one of the new wave punk poets who I seriously believed would break into television, a professional performance poet who was contracted to run workshops for the Festival during the day and do cabaret at night, who I stumbled on by accident, and who did a full set to a packed and noisy full house at the old Prince Bill on Bradshawgate, and the perennial Alec Martin, who single-handedly saved a Sunday lunch-time session at a Three Crowns full of people enjoying their Sunday roast before going to the Victorian Street Market. The only legacy of this exercise in virtual humiliation was a monthly Sunday night session at The Dog and Partridge, on a beer crate, under the old dart board, which lasted for several months driven by Alec, but which gradually developed into an acoustic night. I hung up my pen one Sunday when three bearded ZZ Top lookey-likey hill-billies, probably from Tonge Moor, turned away from the “stage”,  dropped their pants in unison and mooned at my laboured set.       

The front room at the M&S holds about 15 people. There were maybe 7 or 8 there and they had already started. In the “chair “was that familiar face with the battered hat. He welcomed me in and I sat back. Now despite claiming to be a man of the people I can be pretty picky, and I was very interested to see what company I was keeping. Amongst them were two or three beaten-up characters who I took to have been on the wrong end of an all-day drinking session and  two women, one younger, one older. The younger turned out to be Nicola Beckett. The format was simple, the organiser asked for contributions in a broad South London accent that rasped hoarsely of too many cigs, too many ciders, and too many songs. People leafed through their note books or scraps of paper, or buried down into a box in the centre of a room which held a varied collection of poetry books of all genres and origins. The rules were simple, “there are no rules”. Everyone’s contribution was revered and applauded. An invisible ball was passed on to determine who went next. I took the easy way and read some favourites by published poets. People came and went. It was noisy, informal, interspersed with chat and silence, and beer breaks. The pub was bouncing, the juke box on full, the wicker screen separating the front room from the bar, carefully adjusted each time someone came or went, as if it was making the slightest difference to the background noise level.

Leprechaun-like, John Jelly conducted proceedings with a knowing air, a man at ease with his mission, supping his Thatchers, smoking roll-ups, face weather-worn, sleep-deprived, lined like a road map of life. So that was the first evening. I went back many times, taking other people including Julian Jordon, watching regulars come and go, observing the loves and hates, spits and spats, that punctuated each Sunday evening’s readings. I learned. I took advice ; “timing Dave, its all about…..timing”. I grew more confident. I rehearsed new ill-formed pieces that I took on elsewhere. I revisited old inspirations, like re-meeting old friends who’d been kept shelved and boxed for a dozen years.  Oh yes the camp split periodically as A fell out with B who’d disliked C and fancied D. A women’s splinter group organised by Nicola emerged, meeting on alternate fortnights at the Anchor. John’s nights kept going, peaking with visitors  from Manchester and Huddersfield, Gordon Zola from Salford, and increasing patronage, if only for ten minutes to recite the lyrics of Maybelline or Too Much Monkey Business, from Hovis Presley. There was a Man and Rhyme birthday party, in summer 2003. The pub put on a buffet, we used the back room , twice as large, attracting about 30 people, had a glorious time. The whole event was videoed by Ged Thomas but never seeing the light of day as far as I know. By the following summer Julian and I had moved to our own quieter venue at the Sweet Green, following Nicola who decided to move on from the Anchor. She set it up, but couldn’t make the first meeting so I ran it. John would attend, and it became the basis of Write out Loud. We ran our first event at the Octagon in the February of 2004. We had to turn people away. Hovis compered and John made an unscheduled appearance bringing the house down. I never mentioned his poetry, thoughtful, funny and well-informed. Somewhere someone must have photographs from that night. We moved to the Howcroft after a dramatic surge in Write out Loud numbers. John died that summer. Twelve months later Hovis was dead.